This page is archived
We're keeping this page up as a courtesy to folks who may need to refer to old instructions. We don't plan to update this page.
As Drupal site-builders and developers we are all very aware that Drupal 7 is not the most useful product out of the box. We constantly add modules and custom code to make Drupal do what we need. There is nothing wrong with this, in fact it is what attracts people to using Drupal in the first place. The block system that comes with core is what we get after installation as our real only means to laying "stuff" out for our website. People have done things like turning nodes into blocks, or making every block on our a site a view. These concepts work, but have a lot of draw backs for usability and performance. There are lots of layout tools to use, but this series is going to take a look at the Context and Bean modules. These two modules are really two completely different modules but when used together give us some pretty powerful options in place of Drupal's core block system.