Site Building

Comparison of Layout-Building Approaches in Drupal for Drupal 8, 9, 10, and 11

Layout Builder is one of many different approaches to handling editorial layouts in Drupal. Now that it's stable, and part of Drupal core, we expect to see it become the dominant approach over time. However, as with most things in Drupal, there are multiple ways to solve the problem of creating component based flexible layouts that can be administered via the user interface.

It's a good idea to understand the different approaches and know what's available.

When it comes to component based design and ability to construct flexible layouts, it is important to understand the benefits and risks of the most popular techniques: Paragraphs, Bricks, entities and view modes, and Layout Builder. Understanding which approach fits the needs of your project best can be critical for its success in the future.

In this tutorial we'll look at some common approaches to administering layouts in a way that gives content editors controls including:

  • Drupal core's Layout Builder
  • Using core's entity reference fields and view modes
  • The contributed Paragraphs module
  • The contributed Bricks module

By the end of this tutorial you should have a broad overview of the different popular approaches to creating editor-controlled layouts.