How can I assign a block to a panel or mini-panel?

Question

I was reading the project description for Panels, and I noticed it was a way—using mini-panels—for me to rearrange the contents of my site.

So I just created a mini-panel with a two column layout. I want to add one block to the left and one block to the right. How can I do this?

Answer 1

Mini panels are blocks and you can add Mini Panels to Panels. You can't add blocks themselves to Panels, but usually most of the content that you can display in a block, you can actually display in Panels, content such as Activities, Menus, Mini panels themselves, Miscellaneous, Pages elements, Views, Widgets, Nodes, Custom content and more.

See Drupal - Blocks vs Context vs Panels.

Answer 2

You can add custom blocks to mini-panels. So create a custom block on the block admin page - admin/structure/block - and then add to your mini-panel or panel.