I have been bumping up against some of the limitations that Drupal imposes on layouts. There are ways around just about any limitation Drupal may have, the trick is to find and use the right one. So, I flirted with the idea of using Blocks and Panels together. But, as seen in the earlier post, I have nixed that. CSS can provide many placement options but I believe that really big changes need to happen at the level of the theme, in the code. So, I started looking at AT’s Gpanels. These are code blocks that can be inserted into the page.tpl.php file that will give more layout options. I think this is going to be the way to go. This solution supports responsive design as well.
- Need to use Panels
- Need Responsiveness built in
- Need more layout options
- Don’t want to use Blocks at all
- Need to use Views
OK, So I can’t use GPanels because it is Blocks. Dropping this. Going to try Panels Everywhere again. I failed at that once but I’m going to give it another shot. I know more now so I bet that the issues that I was having will be overcome.
landie.tech 
Hi, re “Don’t want to use Blocks at all” – I am just wondering what is the problem with blocks or why don’t you like blocks?
LikeLike
Hey Juc,
I have had better design flexibility with Panels. I also found a few bench tests that showed that Panels has better performance than Blocks. So for me, Panels works better than Blocks. But I also have to add that I never ended up using Gpanels at all: just regular Panels. I also find that using Panels with Minipanels will really let you design pages with a lot of flexibility in the layout.
LikeLike
Hey PJ,
Ok thanks but when you say you don’t use blocks do you mean that you use blocks for content but leave them in region:none and place them via Panels or do you mean that you just don’t use blocks at all?
Anyway as for myself I am heading down the Omega 4 / Panels route.
Thanks…
LikeLike
that’s correct: i don’t use blocks at all. i don’t turn them on for the regions on block manager or whatever it is called. i just use panels for all the layouts. i believe that the only time i’ve had to use the configure link on block manager is for some of the superfish stuff.
i have a lot of info about panels on this site, especially in the context of adaptive themes. since omega is responsive out of the box as well, there should be a lot of parallels. but to get to what the root of the question is: if you use panels you can pretty much bypass blocks entirely.
LikeLike
OK thanks, I will be looking at your panels info. Also I found this video helpful re working with panels without blocks
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CmTuvzbPduI (at 2hrs 02)
Anyway thanks…
LikeLike
Sure! Good luck and thanks for the link.
LikeLike