Block manager (Front end) display blocks where we want?

[crazzzydave]

Loving IPB4, but one criticism I have is the block manager (for placing widgets like sidebars and gallery images in forums). At the moment, if you go into a category/forum, and place a block there, that block is displayed in every single forum throughout the whole forum. The only place this doesn't happen is on the main forum index page.

It would be a lot better if you could choose what was displayed where. I have a category (General chat) with forums in it. One forum is for members cars, and I'd like to be able to have in the sidebar certain blocks. But I don't want these blocks in any other forum, only members cars. With the current block manager, you can't do this. So whatever blocks I place in members cars appear in every other forum. Not good.

Is there a fix for this so that the blocks aren't global (unless we want them to be)?

Kind regards

Dave

[steve00]

15 hours ago, crazzzydave said:

Loving IPB4, but one criticism I have is the block manager (for placing widgets like sidebars and gallery images in forums). At the moment, if you go into a category/forum, and place a block there, that block is displayed in every single forum throughout the whole forum. The only place this doesn't happen is on the main forum index page.

It would be a lot better if you could choose what was displayed where. I have a category (General chat) with forums in it. One forum is for members cars, and I'd like to be able to have in the sidebar certain blocks. But I don't want these blocks in any other forum, only members cars. With the current block manager, you can't do this. So whatever blocks I place in members cars appear in every other forum. Not good.

Is there a fix for this so that the blocks aren't global (unless we want them to be)?

Kind regards

Dave

Believe similar asked in this topic

Are you looking for this sort of idea:

On my website some will have a banner there and some will not

e.g. these are 2 that do have banners, the rest do not (other than the first main page)

http://community.thehost4u.co.uk/forum/13-giveaway-of-the-day-software/

http://community.thehost4u.co.uk/forum/4-invision-power-board-tutorials/

[Rikki]

I think that's a good idea, although it would take some thinking to figure out how we'd make that friendly and understandable. If it was just forums it probably wouldn't be too difficult, but we'd also want the same flexibility to apply to all the other apps. 

[steve00]

35 minutes ago, Rikki said:

I think that's a good idea, although it would take some thinking to figure out how we'd make that friendly and understandable. If it was just forums it probably wouldn't be too difficult, but we'd also want the same flexibility to apply to all the other apps. 

Did mention this a long time ago via support and was told cannot be done but have done it for forums although a pain to do

[gbstn10]

2 hours ago, Rikki said:

I think that's a good idea, although it would take some thinking to figure out how we'd make that friendly and understandable. If it was just forums it probably wouldn't be too difficult, but we'd also want the same flexibility to apply to all the other apps. 

I've been thinking about this because I wanted to raise the issue myself. What I came up with was a system which shows list of blocks, then you'd toggle where they're viewable. Kind of like when you setup a new membership group in the ACP and toggle which categories of the forum people can see.

At the moment, as good as the drag-and-drop system may be, it's very tedious when you have multiple pages to go through and edit. If we could edit the widget (rather than the page) and select where that widget was viewable, that'd go a long way to making things easier, as you'd be placing blocks all over the site from one page.

[crazzzydave]

9 hours ago, steve00 said:

Believe similar asked in this topic

Are you looking for this sort of idea:

On my website some will have a banner there and some will not

e.g. these are 2 that do have banners, the rest do not (other than the first main page)

http://community.thehost4u.co.uk/forum/13-giveaway-of-the-day-software/

http://community.thehost4u.co.uk/forum/4-invision-power-board-tutorials/

Yeas, that looks like what we're after. So not all forums have the same widgets/blocks in them. Some might have a widget/blocks or three, others won't have any widget/blocks.

Nice looking site btw!

[steve00]

13 hours ago, crazzzydave said:

Yeas, that looks like what we're after. So not all forums have the same widgets/blocks in them. Some might have a widget/blocks or three, others won't have any widget/blocks.

Nice looking site btw!

If interested will try and create a tutorial on my site on how I achieved what I have

The only thing against my way is that you would create block(s) with a few if's in it which may not be what you want to do .... depends how many forums you want to have different blocks for ?

[crazzzydave]

lol the dreaded If statements! Been learning about them on my college I.T. course, and have been using them in C# and also in Excel now. Blooming If's get everywhere! I take it there would be a hella lot of them to be added into it? Deffo interested in a tutorial mate if it's not much trouble for you. Got your site added to bookmarks as it's mega handy!

[steve00]

15 hours ago, crazzzydave said:

lol the dreaded If statements! Been learning about them on my college I.T. course, and have been using them in C# and also in Excel now. Blooming If's get everywhere! I take it there would be a hella lot of them to be added into it? Deffo interested in a tutorial mate if it's not much trouble for you. Got your site added to bookmarks as it's mega handy!

Yea, bit of a pain but until someone with more knowledge than me to write some kind of mod then afraid best I can do

I know zilch about coding ... only skinning and have spent hours figuring it out whereas someone with more knowledge likely do something better in less time.

Will take me a while to do as got to re-think how I did it

[crazzzydave]

Much appreciated mate. Any kind of tutorial is great as it helps all us non coders get to grips with things. I would love to be fluent in coding, especially where the forums are concerned, but I struggled with C# (although passed the exam so chuffed about that) but the coding for the forums is a slightly different language again so very hard to get my head around it.

[steve00]

On ‎19‎/‎03‎/‎2016 at 2:45 PM, crazzzydave said:

Much appreciated mate. Any kind of tutorial is great as it helps all us non coders get to grips with things. I would love to be fluent in coding, especially where the forums are concerned, but I struggled with C# (although passed the exam so chuffed about that) but the coding for the forums is a slightly different language again so very hard to get my head around it.

Not sure if I should do this now as appears IPS have set it for internal review ... yes may still take time but suppose it depends if want to continue with my way or wait for IPS ?

[crazzzydave]

Suppose it depends on how long the IPS internal review will take?

[steve00]

15 minutes ago, crazzzydave said:

Suppose it depends on how long the IPS internal review will take?

yep ... if lucky perhaps make it for 4.2 ?

[kar3n2]

On 16/03/2016 at 5:19 PM, crazzzydave said:

Loving IPB4, but one criticism I have is the block manager (for placing widgets like sidebars and gallery images in forums). At the moment, if you go into a category/forum, and place a block there, that block is displayed in every single forum throughout the whole forum. The only place this doesn't happen is on the main forum index page.

It would be a lot better if you could choose what was displayed where. I have a category (General chat) with forums in it. One forum is for members cars, and I'd like to be able to have in the sidebar certain blocks. But I don't want these blocks in any other forum, only members cars. With the current block manager, you can't do this. So whatever blocks I place in members cars appear in every other forum. Not good.

Is there a fix for this so that the blocks aren't global (unless we want them to be)?

Kind regards

Dave

Im exactly the same Dave...  really need unique blocks around each forum because every forum is on something different ( in my case an area/county in UK) so no point having same generic stuff throughout them all when they need to have relevent stuff.  Been saying it for months now 

On 21/03/2016 at 2:31 PM, steve00 said:

yep ... if lucky perhaps make it for 4.2 ?

we should be so lucky... 

 

[Meddysong]

Didn't @Nathan Explosion work out a solution for you a few wines weeks ago, Karen? Or am I thinking about something else?

[kar3n2]

Just now, Meddysong said:

Didn't @Nathan Explosion work out a solution for you a few wines weeks ago, Karen? Or am I thinking about something else?

yes he did and ive got them round pages/directory I am building. Not sure if it would be the same thing around the forums though?   I should ask him.

[Meddysong]

He seems a nice enough fella. Strike whilst the iron's hot and use CHARM POWER on him
 (Then share the answers with the rest of us!)

[kar3n2]

1 minute ago, Meddysong said:

He seems a nice enough fella. Strike whilst the iron's hot and use CHARM POWER on him
 (Then share the answers with the rest of us!)

yeah Im gonna buy him some beers soon haha

[Nathan Explosion]

Beer is always good

Yeah, I think the solution I did for @kar3n2 would work on any section of the site, not just pages. However, I haven't thought about how it would work with non-custom blocks, if you know what I mean.

I'm still going to put up a guide on how to create what I did, and it will cover doing this on the site as opposed to just on pages - just not had the time recently due to day job (I work from home, but go to customer sites as and when needed....problem is that the 'needed' has been nearly every day for the last few weeks. I'm at home today, then got the long Easter weekend, so will see what I can throw together)

I'll see if I can figure out a way of accommodating non-custom blocks in to the mix.

[Nathan Explosion]

I've got the guide typed up now, in a text file. Will be putting it in to a topic later, once I've got a response on a move request for the topic. Will post up the link then.

Linkage: