Panels

See also Hally Turner's notes on this presentation.

Suzanne Kennedy
Architecting Drupal Sites with Panels 3

Also try composite layout and other page layout module assistance.

Original motivation was a better alternative to the core block configuration.

Hi Benjamin,

Looking forward to talking tomorrow. I do have some questions ready so I'm inserting them below. I suspect we won't get everything covered in 30 minutes so if you do have time to extend to an hour that might be a good idea. I can pay ahead of time if you wish.

Step 1: Find a function that does some or most of what you want.
Step 2: Find another function that does the rest of what you want.
Step 3: Mash them together.

The situation this time: we have a Drupal 5 site (World Social Forum 2008) with i18n (internationalization module) and need translated content to show up in panels.

Update: Go straight to the patch.

how do I make a view that displays only recent comments made on a certain content type?

This is basic views functionality.

Simply filter by node: type to restrict the view to specific content types.

The trick is you have to choose list (or table and possibly other views made possible by the Views Bonus Pack). Then you can select which fields to show: comment subject and time and body and anything else comment related.