Is Panels necessary in Drupal 7?

Question

A bit of explanation - I'm a Drupal 6 developer who has never used Panels, but was looking at it for a new site that I was going to initially build in D6, but am now going to build in D7 since the modules I need all seem to be available.

This will be my first D7 site.

For this site I was going to use Panels in D6 for the following reasons:

• The majority of the pages in the site will have a sidebar, but the composition of that sidebar will vary, and the 'content area' may be subdivided in up to 3 divisions, either in 1+1+1 or 2+1, including back and forth from one to the other in the same page (ie 2+1 on top of 1+1+1).
• The homepage will be completely different and have its own layout.
• Some pages, such as the forum, will be "full-width" and will have no sidebar whatsoever.

It seemed like Panels could accomplish all of these (if not, that would be good to know :-).

In Drupal 7, is Panels still a good bet for this, or is there a better way? It seems beyond what my understanding of simple blocks and regions can do, but I may be wrong...

Answer 1

It's all possible with regular blocks and regions, Panels is just much easier to administer, and has the added advantage of being exportable.