Hi all,

Im experimenting with a module to add extendable contentblocks which are global accessible on different template positions on the website. ( Like Joomla does with modulespositions and SS does with widgets, but with a central admin section in the CMS)

I'm curious about your opion about my approach:

Use ModelAdmin to administer blocks, templatepositions and css classes (css needs some rethinging).
A Block class which is extendable to add functions like a searchblock, menublock, loginblock.
Each Block can be set to display on page selection or all pages (loggedin/loggedout?) (Not yet implemented)

I made a working example, but needs some adjustments.

Current usage:

Install the block module.
In the cms (MainMenu blocks) add your cssclasses and template positions and add some general contentblocks( with template position and css class)

In Page_Controller add:

function Blocks($pos = 'header') {
		return DataObject::get("Block", "Active = 1 AND Position = '".$pos."'");
	}

In your theme Page.ss add your desired blockpositions like:

<% control Blocks(header) %>
  <% include Blocks %>
<% end_control %>

where header is a theme positions like footer, left, right etc.

I added a zip with a sample blockmanager and some extended Block classes for a MainMenuBlock and SearchBlock.

Some TODO's:
Using RenderWith instead of a switch in Blocks.ss (requires new controls when extending the blocks).
Adding a Tab for selecting pages where to display the Block.

What do you think?

Edit::
For making TinyMCE to work in ModelAdmin I needed this patch:

http://open.silverstripe.com/attachment/ticket/3586/ModelAdmin.js

Very interesting for me.
Will you continue to develop it?

Can you briefly explain how to install sample blockmanager?

This looks like exactly what I need but I'm completely unfamiliar with this level of CMSMS development so could do with some help Embarrassed.Basically, I have a sidebar that contains, in the top half, the news summary from the news module. Below that, I want the website editors to be able to edit what appears in the lower half of the sidebar.I tried adding a content block ({content block="Sidebar"}) to that section of the sidebar. When I went to braindumps oracle
edit one of the pages, I had a 'Sidebar' text area and that worked fine. However what I wanted was for that content block to then be repeated on all the pages that use the sidebar, without manually going through them all.

Which is what brought me here.

I use ManyManyDOM to manage callouts on every page, and the nice thing is they're extendible, and since 2.4, you can drag-and-drop sort them uniquely on any page, and it's all in CMSMain, so you can be looking at a given page and see its associated callouts.

Would that be code you guys would be interested in seeing?

I've very big interes.
Can I see code, instructions, examples?

Thanks