I'm just starting out with Aurora, coming from a bit of experience with Zen. I'm loving it! Thanks! But as someone without a lot of experience with Panels or Blockify or Singularity, I find myself guessing at quite a few things. I need to review my understanding of the recommended approach to page and panel layout.

I have read the README.md file in the aurora theme folder, and the online Documentation here:
http://snugug.github.io/Aurora/features/

as well as the following threads:

Is this a roughly accurate summary of the recommended approach to creating layouts in 7.x-3.2?:

  • use Singularity as the grid system, using SASS to apply grids to layout file(s) in the layouts partials folder
  • use Blockify to pull various elements out of the page.tpl.php template and make them configurable via blocks interface, or insertable into panels
  • use a custom, one-section-per-row panels layout to insert content into panel sections instead of using sidebar or similar regions
  • use the breakpoint mixin to lay out all custom panel sections and blocks in a responsive layout written into the layout SASS

So, I don't do any drag and drop layout in Panels, I don't use the "flexible" panel layout or any of the other pre-built Panels layouts, the ONLY layout I use in Panels is the new sample layout, or one modelled after it?

I don't use Drupal page "regions" much anymore either, dropping sidebars in favour of a "pancake" stack of regions, or more likely, replacing them instead with a pancake stack of Panel sections.

All my layout work after organizing the single column of blocks or sections for mobile-first content is done in SASS by adding grid-spans and breakpoints to each block or section I want to make responsive.

Am I getting the gist of everything here or is there something else I can be doing with panels or by inserting classes into sections or blocks that will make all this even awesomer?

For a beginner, I think a more complete walkthrough of the recommended approach to layout would be valuable. While I gathered all these things from the online documentation, the way all these things integrate together into a site is a bit opaque to a new user - especially one without prior experience with earlier versions of Aurora, or with limited Panels, Blockify, Singularity experience.

Thanks for any feedback or help to clarify my misunderstandings.

Comments

iamcarrico’s picture

Status: Active » Fixed

I know this is late--- but you are doing everything correctly. I have read over this issue many times wondering if we can offer a better overview of theming intended in Aurora--- but in reality Aurora is just giving the tools to do custom themes. We have some recommendations (such as using blockify) form our experience but that is it.

As a note: I am trying to get a better Drupal 7 theming doc put together. I haven't had the time to finish it as of now, but when I do it can be found here https://www.gitbook.io/book/iamcarrico/drupal-theming-docs/

Go get 'em tiger--- you got this.

pkiff’s picture

Issue summary: View changes
pkiff’s picture

[Change above is just a fix to a broken link in the issue summary]

Thanks for the feedback! I look forward to checking out (and hopefully contributing to...?!) the theming docs that you folks are working on.

I did manage to roll out a site using Aurora 3.x following the strategy I outlined above and everything went fine. I also used a similar strategy to roll out a site using Omega 4.x. Both used a Singularity grid system and a simple "stacked pancake" Panels structure for regions. The main difference between the two was that I used Blockify for the Aurora site, and I used Panels Everywhere for the Omega site.

Though there is no reason I couldn't have reversed those choices, since as you point out, Aurora doesn't demand that one take a layout approach using Blockify, it just provides tools that you can use as a basis for whatever theme layout strategy you prefer.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed - issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.