I need to create certain pages in my site, some of them relatively simple layout with mostly static content like Contact Us and About Us which I've created as Content Type Page (node). Similarly other content types have a relatively complex layout and content composed of both static and dynamic data. For example a page with some fancy header images a couple of paragraphs (static) and a list of URLs for contents belonging to a specific category (dynamic). Some of the pages have their own flyout menu (which i use Nice menus) and I create a new menu element and add the block for that specific page which I feel is definitely not the best method to go about this. My site is content heavy and there are many such pages and so its not possible for me to code the URLs in the content body in static manner.
I'm relatively inexperienced with contributed modules like Views and Panels but tried to get some ideas watching webcasts. But it seems that they are very vast topics and I couldn't find what I required from them. Hence request any of the members who've faced similar circumstances to share their experience and provide the methods/implementations or even modules they tried for this.