CMS Made Simple Forums

Hello everybody,

This is my first post since I installed CMSMS yesterday, so I am sorry if I asked silly question as I don't understand the basic stuff of CMSMS.

I have been trying to understand how to setup sidebars which are independent to the pages. But I can not find anywhere in the documents or forums, about how sidebars in CMSMS actually works.

To my understanding up to now, the sidebar is connected directly to the page we are creating. So if I wanted to have sidebar that is applied to all pages I have to copy it to all the pages. And if I wanted to have sidebar which will be displayed differently, for instance depending on whether the users have logged in or not, then I have to double those the pages but having different sidebars. This sounds to me quite complicated, especially when I have to make the change on a page, then I have to make sure the changes apply to all related pages.

For comparison purpose, in Drupal this is what they call it "Block" which is independent to any pages. But I can assign it to any pages I want, and to any places on the page where they are defined in the stylesheet.

How could I do that in CMSMS?

Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

Anto

Anto,

I don't know if I understand you correct, as I dont know Drupal

In CMSMS you can call a second/third or more block by putting the calling in the template, that will make sure that another editing area is available per page.

There is a module PageBlocks that will allow you to make multiple content-blocks and attach them to different pages....

For fixed text on multiple pages, you could use Global Content Blocks as well, as they are modifiable through the single GCB, and will be shown on all pages, that are attached to the template, calling that GCB....

So complete variable, multiple similar blocks, or a single block to all pages hanging on the same template.... all possible.

Ronny

Thanks a lot Ronny for confirming that this is possible in CMSMS. So I will not stop searching 

And yes. For this purpose, at the moment I am utilising the Global Content Block and have the sidebars in all pages empty. But then I was wondering why do we need to have a box for sidebar content under the page content box (when editing the page), if we didn't really use it? There must be a good reason for that.

I will also try the PageBlock module, to see how it works.

Anto,

the GCB is edited in "Content -> Global Content Blocks" and doesnt open another wysiwyg block in editing pages.

There is only an additional block-area opened for editing, when another contentblock is placed in the page-template. As that will dynamically give you the option to create a specific text for that page alone.

There is a little smarty-routine around, that will check whether this pagespecific contentblock has data inside (as the second contentblock is optional) and you can put the GCB instead if you want. This will lead to a content-block to be editable per page. If filled that is shown, else the default GCB is shown....

Ronny