In this chapter we will introduce the Panels module. Panels is used to create pages consisting of one or more items of content of various types, including views, blocks, nodes, and menus.
There are a number of factors to consider when deciding whether to use a Panel or not. It is perfectly acceptable to simply use the blocks system to display content blocks at various regions on a regular node display. However, Panels adds a great deal of flexibility, by allowing you to add much more than blocks, but at the small price of increasing the load time, and complexity of the HTML output.
Using Panels, you can add a wide variety of content such as views, blocks, content nodes, and forums to any region of a panel, and the site editor can easily move them around. There are a number of different layouts that can be used, and the site editor can even create their own, from within the CMS.
The homepage of a site is the perfect candidate for using a Panel. There are usually lots of distinct...