Drupal Panels

Whilst Drupal itself is the most fantastic and powerful content management system / development platform, there are a few modules which are, in our view, almost as important as the core system itself. These have revolutionised the platform and the way we use it. The modules which go into nearly every install of Drupal we do are:

These modules are both incredibly powerful in their own right, but have also been built with the same principles of extensibility that Drupal core has. This makes them an invaluable tool when rapidly creating sites. We would, in particular, like to thank the developers of Drupal itself and of these modules (both Views and Panels are created by 'merlinofchaos'). Their work is amazing and when you look at their code, you cannot fail to be impressed.

What does Panels do

Panels is the ultimate way to structure pages of a website. You can respond almost immediately to the changing needs of navigation, presentation, and page layout – including on production sites (think changing the front page based on Google Analytic bounce rates). Essentially they let you move blocks of content around a page using a drag and drop interface – but it's more powerful than that. You can dynamically choose what is shown on a page based on data being passed to it or even render a page in two different ways. Once you have used Panels, you'll wonder how you ever did without it.