Module Development

Introduction to CTools Style Plugins for Drupal 7

Check your version

This tutorial covers a topic in Drupal 7 which may or may not be the version you're using. We're keeping this tutorial online as a courtesy to users of Drupal 7, but we consider it archived.

Sprout Video

A CTools Style Plugin allows a developer to provide a settings form and a template file that can be chosen and configured by a site administrator using the Panels "Style" interface.

In this lesson, we will:

  • Explore Panels' Style Interface
  • Identify Default Panels Styles
  • Introduce Demo Style Plugin

By the end of this lesson, you will understand how to access Styles in Panels and why you might want to create your own custom Styles interface for your site's editors to use.

Additional resources

The code for this plugin and module is located in sites/all/modules/demo_panestyles. See Companion Files to download the Files export, which also contains a demo site for Lessons 8-19 of Building Websites in Drupal 7 with Panels. Log in at /user with username "admin" and password "admin."