Put the “Add Content” form into a Panel Page

I had this idea in the back of my mind for a while. Really, it was the idea that there was something that I was going to run up against. And I have and I figured out what to do about it too. The problem:

How do I put the add/edit forms into my panels pages so that they have the consistent look and feel as the rest of the site. And so that they have access to my nice Superfish menu that I have at the top of the page for all my navigation. And the answer is in the Variant of the Page via its Content type Context. Clear as mud, right?

Think about this first: don’t look at the editing process where the content comes first then the editor for that content. It’s the other way around. The Add/Edit form comes first, THEN the Context determines what Content is edited. To me, this seems a little backwards. But I am just an infrastructure guy historically. But the Add/Edit functionality is independent of the content type in a way. So you invoke the add/edit first, then tell it what it needs to edit as far as a content type goes.

Go to Pages and enable the Page for the Node Add/Edit System Page:

Create a Variant. See SS 2. Make sue to check the Context check box

Add the Context that you want. In the SS 3 you see that I have chosen Forum as the Content Type.

When you create a variant for the Forum Content Type in reagrds to the the Add/Edit form, you can place it in the nice Panel editor that we know and love. The trick seems to be, that you have to choose the General Form as seen here.

Once you add this, the rest will fall into place. I’ll add more to this later.