I have some D7 sites built and I have made some POCs on D8 (fortunately I know Twig quite well as I have used it on other "pure" PHP apps) but can't say I am a guru in either of them.

I have to implement a block-based layout for my client (in-house) in Drupal 8. By block-based I mean a layout where there are three different block-sizes that may be stacked lines over each other like in Windows phone (wide: 2 x 1, or two side by side (1x1 + 1x1) Each 1x1 may also be built from 4 0.5 x 0.5 blocks.

Each block has a image (either just image (uploaded by user if new) or background image (from a list of pre-fabricated images) or background color (might be implemented as a simple image as well to simplify the ui). The background image/color block may also have some text over it. While writing this I start to think that after all there is no need to distinguish between pre-fabricated background images and user-added (except maybe from the artistic point of view)

To sugar it - the layout must also be responsive.

I think the layout itself (HTML+CSS) is not a problem, but the user interface is. How could I utilize Drupal to allow content people to manage the tiles by themselves. In their wildest dreams they would probably like to just drag and drop the tiles, but I don't see any simple solution to that and I think I can coerce them to change whole line if needed.

Panels/layout-plugin might have some potential but I am not sure if they aregoing all the way to the end. Another possibility I have thought but not yet tried to implement is if I could have five types of content types/blocks: 2 x 1, 1x1+1x1,4*0.5x0.5 + 1x1, 1x1 + 4*0.5x0.5 and 4*0.5x0.5 + 4*0.5x0.5m which should be able to stack by user.

Do you have any suggestions based on which to start approaching the case?

As you see I am not so well-versed with this and I hope to get some input. It should be up and running in the beginning of September (sigh)

If my explanation is difficult to understand, ask and I try to clarify.

wbr

hank

Comments

Jeff Burnz’s picture

OK so basically TL:DR.

IMO Panels and Page Manager are too raw to go into production at this stage, Layout Plugin on the other hand is good, used by Display Suite and Paragraphs modules.

I think Paragraphs is your best overall bet (strait out of contrib), you can really do quite amazing things with it.

hcape’s picture

Thank you, I'll check the paragraph :)

hank

hcape’s picture

Just a feedback

Paragraphs turned out to be the right tool for this.

Thank you once more :)

hank