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JAN 31, 2014

Introducing the Pane Module


There are a couple of scenarios we see on pretty much any Drupal-powered website we
work on. The rst and foremost among those is often that our client wants to, you know,
actually be able to easily manage their content. At the same time we need to be able to t
their content into the information architecture and design of the site. When were talking
about entities, nodes, and taxonomy terms it is pretty easy for content managers to go in
and edit content. But what about little blocks of text on the home page, in the footer or
featured call-outs on various pages? These kinds of features have been a constant struggle to ensure that they exist through the process, but allow the content itself to change as
needed.

Front-end example of the Pane Module at work.


Over the years weve tried many dierent Drupal modules and solutions including, Core
blocks, Boxes, Beans, and Fieldable Panels Panes, but none of them quite worked right for
both us and our clients. So we wrote our own module called Pane. The key features that
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we needed from our new module were:


Exportability allow it to be exported through CTools and Features; neither Core
blocks, Beans or Fieldable Panels Panes are easily exported
Separation of conguration from content allow the guarantee of existence and format but allow the content to vary; when Boxes are exported they export the content
along with conguration
Integration with CTools/Panels were heavily invested into the CTools universe and
needed our tool to work nicely with those; most of the modules above stem from the
block system and dont play nicely with CTools
Internationalization allow the content to vary based on the current language; Beans
and Fieldable Panels Panes are entities and could presumably be translated, but theres
a layer of complexity involved in that which makes it more challenging
What the Pane module allows a developer to do is create a Pane and embed it on either a
CTools Page Manager page as a CTools Content Type or through the normal Block interface. From there the Pane can be edited through the normal Panels or Block interface to
edit HTML through a WYSIWYG or if using the Pane Entity Reference plugin to add and
order references to various entity types much like the Entity Reference module. Those
referenced entities can be output using either a display mode or a View.
Once the module is installed and the permissions congured, an admin can go to Administer -> Structure -> Panes and see a list of current Panes and add new ones.

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They can also edit Panes through the normal Panels interface or through the In Place Editor.

And then exporting can be done through the normal Features interface. The conguration and the data can be exported separately and generally only the container is exported. But if you know that the content isnt going to change and needs to be locked
down in Features it can be there as well.
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This module makes a lot of sense both for developers and content administrators. Let us
know what you think in the comments.

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0 Comments

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