Most of GATE Village is based upon a common theme that provides each user with a familiar look-and-feel regardless of what content they are creating or viewing. Most often in GATE Village there are three main columns of information, the leftmost providing mostly static information about the Village and it's members, the rightmost providing dynamic contextual information that changes depending on what content is being viewed or created, and the middle column that is the content being focused on (like what you are reading right now). This is highly appropriate for GATE Village members and use of themed output is encouraged, however that standard interface may not be suitable for access to all content, particularly public content.

Furthermore, while the viewing of content one "information object" or node at a time is highly appropriate in many circumstances, content management best practices desires content reuse and single-node access is almost the antithesis of content reuse. Panels solve both these problems. In the attached image you can see use of Panels to provide an alternate layout for the middle column. Our monthly interactive newsletter, called The GATEPost has always been displayed with our corporate header and title, followed by two columns of content which is in turn followed by our corporate footer of contact information.

Panels allow for that reformatting as well as for the reuse of content within the system as each GATEPost article is actually an existing piece of content from within GATE Village.

Panels offer a variety of pre-built layouts as well as a "build your own" layout that allows you to create very sophisticated web pages with great ease.

Panels can also be configured at the system level to allow for bypassing the Village theme and providing the complete appearance of a web page. In this case panels can be though of as very strong rope, capable of creating a beautiful intertwined web design and just as capable of creating a noose :-) For that reason creation of system panels are restricted.