Panels module

The panels module is the ideological son, successor to and almost complete replacement for the dashboard module. This module allows you to create pages that are divided into areas of the page. Where the dashboard module only gave four areas--top, bottom, left and right--this one is a completely flexible system that includes a couple of 2 column and 3 column layouts by default, but is also highly extensible and other layouts can be plugged in with a little HTML and CSS knowledge, with just enough PHP knowledge to be able to edit an include file without breaking it.

Perhaps most importantly, unlike the dashboard module it requires no fiddling with PHP code to include the things you want; the interface lets you add blocks, nodes and custom content just by selecting and clicking.

Some quick things to do with Panels 2:

- Create a panel page with the URL 'node/%' The % is important to make sure that Drupal's menu system works right.
- Go to advanced settings. Add the argument 'node id'. Set it to whichever types you like. Set the title in the argument to '%node'
- Go to content; add 'node content', 'node comments', 'node comment form' panes.

- Create a panel page with the URL 'taxonomy/term/%'
- Go to advanced settings; add the argument 'taxonomy term id'; set it to just one vocabulary. Set the title to %term
- Go to content, add content such as the taxonomy_term view, the term description, term parent, etc.

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Current State of Panels:

Drupal 5: Release Candidate stage. String freeze has been implemented; no new features, and we focus on bug fixes up until we reach an official release.
Drupal 6: Alpha stage. Code is working but unstable, and should NOT be run on production sites. No new features were or will be added up through release; expect the same functionality as Panels2 in D5. There is no D5 -> D6 upgrade path right now.

For a quick overview of the current state of Panels, see this issue.

Panels developers:

The most recent version (it tracks the current -dev) of the D5 Panels 2 API documentation is always available here. We'll also be introducing separate API docs for the Drupal 6 version of Panels once the code becomes more stable.

Releases

Official releases	Date	Size	Links	Status
6.x-2.0-alpha2	2008-Oct-12	390.37 KB	Download · Release notes	Recommended for 6.x