What is the best way to use Panels I have D6 and the Panels module installed. 

I want to be able to control the entire page layout from within Drupal itself, without having to write any new code such as a template file etc

To achieve this, I create a very basic template file which includes the standard html, style, body elements etc and just:

&lt;?php print $content; ?&gt;


This works great, it allows me to for example create a Panel layout for different page layouts, but it also allows me to create full-page landing pages without header/footer etc

The only drawback is that for pages that dont have a Panels template, say for example the user login page, how do I then style/structure this page?
I found this article:

http://ykyuen.wordpress.com/2011/09/13/drupal-customized-user-registrationloginforgot-password-page-with-panel/

Which describes how to workaround this issue with Panels.

This worked well for me, didnt take long at all, but it seems a little hackish. If anybody knows a better way please let me know.