Override Privatemsg Module Message View Layout

Question

The Privatemsg module is great, and the default list of messages and message-creation form are fine, but the form for viewing a message (in my opinion) is horribly unattractive and confusing for most site users - to the point of being unusable. Is there any way of using Panels or Display Suite to design an override, or is the only way to change the template itself. Thanks.

Answer 1

You could create a panels page, that you can use for the messages, but it is not something that would be easily done, and it would require some work.

You could write your own custom code to get the messages. To make it real Panels like, you would need to make an argument plugin, a context plugin and maybe also a relationship plugin. If you know your way around Panels, it would be a simple enough thing to do, but if you're not familiar with that kind of thing, it will probably take you a little while to get things working like you want to.

Unless you want to insert context specific stuff, there's not really any reason to use panels though. If it's just a matter of styling the page, you will get to your results much faster by overriding the templates and theming functions that Privatemsg uses.

So unless you're familiar with Panels or want to become familiar, have some special context needs, you should just do regular theming to get the job done. It'll be the fastest and cleanest way to do this.