The Panels module and more recently the Chaos Tools (Ctools) toolset open up enormous power in using small plugins to accomplish user interface wonders. But it's been a bit of a black art knowing what you can do with a plugin and how to do it. But with a little bit of introduction and some sample code it's not too hard.
We'll cover:
A quick introduction to plugins and where and how they're used
The types of plugins: content types, arguments, contexts, access control and more
