Centralised block/hook system for IP.Board sidebar and applications?

[Mousie]

Currently fighting my way through IP.Content at the moment, and there seems to be a large crossover of blocks available for IP.Content and hooks that appear in the IP.Board sidebar. I love the sidebar and hooks system, but often get frustrated that I can't mix my custom blocks (made with the eMoney Custom Sidebar Blocks) in amongst the application hooks, and so - I have a block of custom sidebar blocks, my hooks, and some hard-coded sidebar blocks on each of my templates.

I'm probably going the long way around this, but given that IP.Content offers a very similar sort of functionality, would it ever be possible to have a system within IP.Board that allows the creation and importing of sidebar hooks/blocks similar to how IP.Content does it?

An application that did the following would be pure amazing:

--- Allowed easy creation of custom feed/plugin/hook blocks (loving the look of the block templates to come out with new IP.Content!)
--- Assign block to appear in sidebar of multiple applications (Blog, Content, Board, etc) - only one edit then required to change blocks across the system
--- Drag & Drop reordering of blocks per application

The ability to expand the sidebar in IP.Board from any page (not just index) would also be amazing. I hate global sidebars as a general rule, but one that I could hide and show as needed would be brilliant.

Cheers, and thanks for reading!

[TracyIsland]

Hmm, maybe I am missing something but it seems to me that what you are asking for is exactly what Dawpie's Global Sidebar app does:

With this application you can display global sidebar on your board. You can add global sidebar or customized section for each application on your board. Application works on caches - minimum resource affect.

NOTE: this mod works only with IP.Board 3.2! You can download version for 3.1 from previous version so no worry!

Features:

• enable/disable modification,
• choose which groups can see adverts,
• integrate with (DP32) Advanced Adverts (must buy it),
• always show main sidebar on all pages or hide it if on specified section will be added custom sidebar,
• add unlimited adverts - sort them, edit or remove,
• add javascript or PHP code into advert content,
• enable or disable default sidebar on the main board page. If not disabled then global ('all' type) custom global sidebar will be displayed above the standard sidebar, and under it will be displayed 'index' type custom global sidebar. - disable 'all pages' sidebar on selected pages,
• option to disable sidebars on selected skins,
• parse any IP.Content block. You can use now {parse block="block_key"} in any sidebar to show block content,
• exclude selected groups from viewing each sidebar,
• use standard sidebar - the same as on the main board page (when enabled global sidebar won't be visible - because global sidebar it's already on the main board page). Note: standard sidebar on other page than main will increase the page load time,
• display on right or left the board side,
• disable 'forum' sidebar type in specified forums.
  

[Meta666]

Do you have a link to this application?
Also are standard blocks like those created with (e32) Custom Sidebar Blocks able to be created and displayed in the global sidebar?