Creating a custom panel layout

The myriad of layouts that the Panels module comes packaged with are usually sufficient for most requirements. That said, themers wanting to display content using more interesting and complex layouts can also roll their own. While it used to be the case that custom panel layouts needed to be added in as a plugin, this is no longer needed.

In this recipe, we will make use of the Panel module's Layout designer to create our own custom layout designed for a page requiring a lot of regions.

Getting ready

It is a good idea to sketch an outline of our layout either on paper or in a graphics editor to get an idea of what we want prior to fiddling with the layout designer. For example, the layout that we are looking to create in this recipe will be based on the rudimentary sketch in the following screenshot which was created using Microsoft Paint.

How to do it...

Create an empty panel page named blurbs with particular care taken to choose Flexible as its layout during creation...