How to build a specific administrable page layout?

Question

I have a HTML layout provided from a template and I need to make an administrative page to fill the template with a content.

The page layout looks like this:

I want to have an admin page where can I (the user) preferably change all the blocks at once. Also there can be arbitrary many of those small blocks at the bottom, so there must be an option to add the bottom block in the admin page.

Also the page requires some custom HTML markup.

I know how to do this with 2 custom content types and 2 views (one for the frontend, one for the admin backend). But is there an easier or more drupal-way to solve this?

Answer 1

Sounds like a job for Panels

The Panels module allows a site administrator to create customized layouts for multiple uses. At its core it is a drag and drop content manager that lets you visually design a layout and place content within that layout. Integration with other systems allows you to create nodes that use this, landing pages that use this, and even override system pages such as taxonomy and the node page so that you can customize the layout of your site with very fine grained permissions.