Building Pages - Blocks vs. Context vs. Panels

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davidburns's picture

** UPDATE: I will be unable to attend DrupalCampNYC 8, but will gladly share my slides and presentation notes if anyone else wishes to present this session. **

** NOTE: This is the same session I did at Drupaldelphia and DrupalCamp Colorado. **

There are ways to organize a page before it gets rendered to the screen. The purpose of this presentation is to show what Drupal does out of the box (blocks/regions) and then show 2 alternatives that provide more flexibility (context & panels). We will identify the strengths and weaknesses of each and provide examples for situations where one is more suited than the other.

Agenda

What topics will your session cover?

  • What are blocks and regions?
  • How do blocks and regions work?
  • What are some of the current issues with just using blocks?
  • What is Context?
  • How do Context work?
  • What are the benefits of context?
  • What are the limitations of context?
  • What is Panels?
  • How do Panels work?
  • What are the benefits of Panels?
  • What are the limitations of Panels?

Goals

What should people come away from your session with?

  • Basic understanding of options beyond core to build pages.
  • Building pages that show content that is aware of each other
  • How and why it's important to build a site with exportable data (version control)
  • Suggestions of a few good base themes that work well with Context

Resources

What resources related to you session should people be aware of?

http://dgo.to/context - http://mustardseedmedia.com/podcast/episode38

http://dgo.to/panels - http://drupalmao.com/redesign

http://dgo.to/omega

http://dgo.to/zen

** UPDATE: I will be unable to attend DrupalCampNYC 8, but will gladly share my slides and presentation notes if anyone else wishes to present this session. **

Comments

Shouldn't it be Blocks + Context vs. Panels + Panes

Alex UA's picture

...Context uses blocks, so I'm not sure why it would be Context vs. Blocks...

Alex Urevick-Ackelsberg
ZivTech: Illuminating Technology

Because with proper usage of

davidburns's picture

Because with proper usage of Context Module you should/would completely avoid going to /admin/build/blocks.

If we were getting specific with naming it would be something like. Building pages with Drupal Core vs Context vs Panels.
On a side note, blocks can be used within panels as well.

I submitted a Context session...

sethcohn's picture

My context session could compliment this, or could overlap it... I could easily do my context session as a more advanced topic, and cover extra stuff... depending on how much of an intro you do, and scheduling.

I hate panels. One of the reasons I love context, is that I never use panels.

My session is an overview of

davidburns's picture

My session is an overview of each module, which features they share, and their benefits. I do a brief example of how Panels and Context work, but nothing in depth. I tried to avoid doing a demo in my first presentation but found the audience was lost with simple slides. They needed to see some real world usage.

Our presentations would compliment each other and maybe get some more audience participation because they'll have the experience of sitting in on a previous session.

Slides

drupal a11y's picture

Are the slides available anywhere? I would love to see them !!!

Slides please

Jumoke's picture

Hi guys,
I would love the see the slides too or any documentation from this event. I am looking for an event that hosts a session in this area (context, panels, blocks).