Blocks

Blocks are smaller chunks of content that you can place in your pages. Examples of some default blocks provided are “Who’s online,” which shows a listing of users currently logged in; “User login,” which displays a login form to anonymous users; and “Recent comments,” which shows a list of the newest comments on the site. The Navigation bar in the sidebar, the “Powered by Drupal” text at the bottom, and even the entire content area of the page are blocks! You can also make your own custom blocks: for example, you might create a block to display an announcement about an upcoming event.

Figure 2-13 shows the Block administration page under Structure?Blocks (admin/structure/block). Blocks are placed within a region of a page. Examples of regions are “Sidebar first,” “Footer,” and “Content.” Region names, and exactly where they appear on a page, vary depending on the theme (or design) of your site; some themes may define additional regions such as “Banner ad” and remove or change some of the default regions. Therefore, blocks must be configured on a per-theme basis. We’ll discuss more about themes and regions later in Spotlight: Themes. You may use the arrow handles on the side to drag blocks to different regions. To see a visual representation of what the regions look like, as pictured in Figure 2-14, click the “Demonstrate block regions” link.