Panels is one of those very important Drupal modules that many people use: not quite as common as Views or CCK, but it’s up there. Panels allows you to place content in various areas beyond the default regions in a Drupal theme, to put a complex multi-column layout in your content area, for example. To this point, I have not learned how to use Panels, but at Drupa Camp Twin Cities 2011, Will Jaspers gave a presentation on how to “Become a Panels rockstar in just one day.” Here is the session description:

Panels is a fantastic module which provides much needed flexibility to aggregate content from varying sources and help users and administrators alike use and re-purpose the information your website provides.

Assuming we can cover all of this in just one hour, you’ll learn:

• What a Panel, a Region and a Pane are.
• How to use the Panels Editor
• How to put custom content into a Pane
• How to use Contexts and Relationships
• How to put views into your panels
• How to make your Views re-usable for Panels
• How to use the Page Manager
• How to make Custom Access Rules
• How to use Views as Contexts
• A few themes that provide custom layouts
• How to code your very-own layout plugin
• How to use Panel layouts in Views

My notes on the session are available after the break.