How do you add a region to a panel

Question

Novice question on Panels - I've inherited a D7 site with Panels 7.x-3.9.

I'm using a system page: node_view, with a variant for the content type I'm working on.

The layout has a number of regions - and just to be clear, by regions, I mean the $plugin['regions'] array in the template's .inc file.

What I can't figure out is how to add new regions.

(I want to add group some fields together so I can insert them using $content['foo'] in the template.)

Modifying the existing region names updates the descriptions used /admin/structure/pages/nojs/operation/node_view/handlers/node_view__panel_context_[UUID]/content

But any extra regions I add don't appear (having done drush cc all) and they also don't appear when creating a brand new variant using the same template.

Am I missing something in the UI (I'm logged in as user 1)?

(Thanks)

Answer 1

I discovered the region is only visible in the variant drag/drop editor after it's been referenced in the template (because in fact you're looking at a site preview, not just an admin page - but that wasn't terribly obvious as none of the rest of theme was visible):

<?php print $content['foo'] ?>