Understanding Views/Panels

By mrcorex on 6 Sep 2015 at 07:23 UTC

I am already using Views. I am trying to implement Panels on my site.

Of what I have understood, it should be possible to build a node-design as I want to and then show this node-design as a list of nodes via Views.

Am I correct in assuming that? If yes, how? I have been trying to wrap my brain arround it, but cannot figure it out.

Thanks for helping out, guys :)

/CoRex

Comments

Views can be used to select

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 6 September 2015 at 20:47

Views can be used to select the nodes you want; Panels can be used to control how they're laid out on display. Depending on your content, this may be overkill.

Alternatively, you can use a View to create a panel that's available to be placed in a Panels layout...

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Is this called mini panels ?

mrcorex commented 7 September 2015 at 07:42

Is this called mini panels ?

Mini-panels are for arranging

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 7 September 2015 at 15:14

Mini-panels are for arranging the layout of things smaller than a page - blocks in your sidebars or your header area for instance.

I have been playing arround

mrcorex commented 13 September 2015 at 19:40

I have been playing arround with views, but there is something that still puzzles me. Everytime I dig deeper more questions arise. :)

Of what I understand, I can make a view-list of nodes by Unformatted List, set it to fields and go crazy. And that is all fine. I can see that I can do a lot.

The thing I am trying to do is to have a formatted output of the nodes in the list. I have found out how to add view-specifc files to the template. But I want to do it all in backend. I do not want to write a single line of code. I might do som css-magic, but that is fine.

Maybe I am misunderstanding something but I thought I could build a panel and uses this in the view-list to format each node. Am I wrong?

Unless you have other reasons

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 13 September 2015 at 22:51

Unless you have other reasons for using Panels (and there are many - it's very powerful) you might be happier with Display Suite.
Display Suite allows you to do a considerable amount of formatting to the display of your nodes. It extends the "Manage Display" function on nodes, and allows you create custom displays - beyond Default and Teaser.
You could create a Display that has just the fields you want, in the order you want, and then set your View to use nodes in a list as you describe, but select the Display you created.
You could also use Field groups in concert with Display suite to gather some of your fields into accordions, tab groups, etc - all without writing any CSS or template code.

Thanks Sam. You really helped

mrcorex commented 14 September 2015 at 21:33

Thanks Sam. You really helped me. :)

One last question. I am trying to determine of how I can build a product-page.

I need to have some description at the top of the page. This will be from left to right 100% width.

Below that I need to have a list of products, which needs to be formatted.

And at the bottom I need to have some more description, again 100% in width.

As I understand now, I need to have a panel-page, which will have 3 parts.

Part 1 will be a block with description.
Part 2 will be a view listing the nodes and use DS as "formatter".
Part 3 will be a block with description.

Am I way of or on the right track ?

Again, really grateful for your help. I dont need a full answer, just point me in the right direction. :)

Thanks in advance.

That sounds like a good

Sam Moore

he/him

Sandy Hook, CT

commented 15 September 2015 at 16:34

That sounds like a good approach.
Your View, which actually display the products, can create a Content Pane display, and that content pane will be available in Panels so you can place it in your layout.