Sidebars and Sidebar Blocks

 Aim:

To add a block in the sidebar for a certain section of the site e.g. NZ /meditation pages.     

A 'block' is simply a piece of content that goes into the sidebar.

Method:

1. Login, do to your country site and click on 'add sidebar block' in admin section.
2. Give a block description e.g. 'meditation-nz'. Title is optional: if you don't add one, it won't show.
3. Then in the Block Body section, add text, images and links like a normal page
4. To list the sidebar on all pages of the site, just ignore the Show Block on specific pages section. It doesn't matter which one of the options you click.

Showing Sidebar in 'Meditation Section' /meditation

As you can see, you can show the block everywhere except specified pages, or on only those pages.

The Pages box is where you specify what pages to include or exclude. For each page we want to include/exclude, we enter its path into this box, one path per line.

The path of a page is its URL, minus the site address and preceding slash. For example if the page we want to include is http://nz.srichinmoycentre.org/meditation, then we put meditation as the path.

By using the * character we can include or exclude the block from many pages:

• meditation - includes/excludes the block on the meditation page only
• meditation* - includes/excludes the block on every page whose path begins with meditation, eg meditation/meditation-auckland
• meditation/* - includes/excludes the block on every page whose path begins with meditation/ (note that this does not include the meditation path itself) 
• *meditation -  includes/excludes the block on every page whose path ends with meditation
• meditation/*/learn-to-meditate -  includes/excludes the block on pages such as meditation/auckland/learn-to-meditate and meditation/christchurch/learn-to-meditate

Changing Position of Block

When we save the block we are taken to the configuration page for all our blocks. We see that the block we created is currently disabled.

To enable our block, we can on region and change it left sidebar to right sidebar, then press save. You can also use the 'drag and drop' icon to move the block from one region to another.

To place the change the order of blocks in a region use the drag and drop cursor to drag the block up or down. Remember to save your changes afterwards.

Notes:

You will notice that you cannot configure the 'Admin Block' or 'Book Navigation' block in the same way that you can configure a block you created yourself. This is something we hope to improve upon in the coming weeks and months.

ps If you disable the Admin block, you will not be able to edit your site, so please be careful :) If you want it 'out of the way' you can always place it in the 'content bottom' region.