Complex websites and web applications can be created by combining configurations of Modules, Content Types (CCK,) Views, Panels, Menus, Blocks, Categories, Roles / Permissions, etc.. This site setup and configuration process is a very time consuming and repetitive bottleneck. Patterns module is built to bypass this bottleneck by managing and automating site configuration. Site configuration is stored in XML or YAML (requires SPYC YAML parser, which needs to be downloaded separately from http://code.google.com/p/spyc/) called Patterns which are easy to read, modify, manage, & share and can be executed manually or as a part of an automated web site deployment.
Patterns are Social!
Anybody can share his own Drupal patterns with the rest of world. Download and enable the Patterns Client module, and start sharing on Patterns Official Server.