Hi, I apologize in advance if this question is posted in the incorrect place. I am new to Drupal and facing a steep learning curve. I'm trying to focus my learning so that I can more quickly start implementing a social networking site for dancers (salsa, swing, ballroom, etc). I have read a lot of great things about Panels, and I am not sure whether to focus my limited free time on learning everything about Panels or just stick to learning Views. I have already spent a lot of time reading through tutorials, but I'm realizing I don't have enough free time to learn everything, so if anyone can offer advice on where to focus my attention, I would be very grateful! Again, my question is what can Panels accomplish that cannot be done with Views? This will help me determine if I should spend time mastering Panels or not.
Thanks!
Comments
Apples and Oranges
Your question doesn't really make a lot of sense. You put blocks and views into panels. Panels doesn't replace views, though it can sort of replace blocks with mini panels. Basic panels are actually pretty easy so there's not a lot to learn. Just create a panel page and start adding content to it.
Michelle
See my Drupal articles and tutorials or come check out the Coulee Region
Thank you Michelle for
Thank you Michelle for taking time to answer my question. I'm afraid my ignorance is showing. Aren't Panels and Views both modules which give you a way to organize and display specified data? So, why do I need Panels if I already have Views? There must be something I'm missing. Sorry if it's a dumb question.
I recommend you take a look
I recommend you take a look at http://nodequeue.demo.logrus.com which uses Panels, Views and Nodequeue. They are all valuable parts for customizing your presentation.
Views lets you pick out specific lists of content; Panels lets you put that in specific places on a page, and lets you put related content near each other.
Very nice, but...
I really enjoyed that site! Very funny! But, what I don't understand is, can't you do the same thing by assigning taxonomy terms to each story (business, science, entertainment, etc), and then creating block views filtered by taxonomy term? Is it a question of placing the blocks where you want them that makes panels necessary? I've been playing around with the Views tutorials, and I thought the purpose of Views was to be able to create a site exactly like the one you have pointed me to.
BTW, on a separate note, why is there no obvious link on drupal.org to the View Documentation page where I found the tutorials? I had to do a search on Views to find that page. Drupal.org seems to have a very disjointed menu navigation interface. The breadcrumb for the tutorials is "Home >> Views Documentation >> Views Tutorials", but when you click on "Home", there's no link anywhere to "Views Documentation". Am I missing something? That seems like a very poor interface design.
drupal.org
drupal.org has about 1/2 a million pages as far as google knows. More than 100.000 contain the word "documentation". A little to much to link to from the frontpage. However it is a well known problem that finding something at drupal.org is not always easy.
Some of the features in panels seem similar to the ones you have using blocks. However Panels are much more flexible in terms of how the layout looks as well as what you can do with them. Also a block can't be displayed while no other content is displayed. Panels have urls themself. Plus as you have noticed the interface of panels is much nicer ;)
Yes, you don't absolutely
Yes, you don't absolutely need panels to do that kind of layout. I can't deny that.
But it's going to be a lot more work for you, because you'll have to design it and implement it and it will be entirely in code. Also, Drupal's block system has some limitations (one block can only appear in one region, period) and Panels uses a system that lets the blocks communicate more easily.
The purpose of Views is to create lists of content. And it absolutely is one of the necessary tools to create a site like that demo; it couldn't be done without Views.
The views documentation can be found by clicking on handbooks >> modules (I think) and then views, which then leads to the Views documentation book. That book is a 'top level' book because when it was 3 links down, the left navigation was useless. But there are too many top level books to display them from Home. So that navigation is a little more difficult. But it's partly because there's so much information on d.o.
There are also several Panels tutorials here: http://drupal.org/node/201915 and a screencast here http://drupal.org/node/210208 (which I notice is not linked from the Panels 2 documentation page, but that page is in need of a lot of help anyway).