A block will usually be placed in the left or right hand columns of the page. Blocks can be dependant on the user's role, whether they are given permission to see and do things. Whether or not a block is visible depends on the role of the user and their privileges. For example, the user may choose to see blogs. Another example could be a block that displays the title of the last 10 news items anywhere on the website. Webmasters in particular would find this unseful, with for example the UK webmaster seeing articles on the Australian site, the Canadian site, etc. if desired.
To help you understand this better, please lookat "Eyes on IofC" block on the right hand side of the homepage. To do this go to Site Building at very top of homepage. Under this select Block – list. Here you will see a list of all the blocks availbable. Under the heading Right side bar, go to Eyes on IofC and click on configure.
Scroll down the page a little and you will come to Block specific headings. Click on Block specific headings if it is not already expanded and you will see more information on that topic – this is called a Toggle where it can collapse and expand in a cycle through 2 or more activities. Some links are collapsed by default, so as not to confuse the user if they are unlikely to use them. If you are likely to need to use the heading then it will be open.
When this block was created the the Block description was "Eyes on IofC block on homepage”. Eyes on IofC, is an administrative name, not seen by the visitor. There will be many blocks so it needs to be precise, e.g. “Eyes on IofC block on homepage”.
The Block title is shown to the user and are the words that appear, in this example “on IofC”.
If the heading has an orange asterisk next to it it is mandatory to fill it in, if there isn't one then it is optional. So block titles don't necessarily have to have a name.
The Block body is the main body of the block, giving the text of what you want to appear in the block.
Under Custom visibility settings you can decide on the appearance of the block, with lines, shading. In this block "full border with angled corner & eye (right column)" was selected.
In Custom specific visibility settings the webmaster can decide whether to allow each user choose whether they want to see the blocks on the page, e.g. whether to have a block on the right hand side that shows the next 3 events or the latest three comments, or new members of my group, etc. The user can decide what blocks are on show by hiding those blocks when they go to their account and choose. This is not an option for all the blocks, and users would not be able to control this particular Eyes on IofC block.
The box that says Show block for specific roles is where a specific role is given e.g. the Administrator is given permission to do things. A team administrator is another example, or a team. There will be quite a few new roles, e.g. Group adminstrator, data administrator, webmaster. A webmaster could give permission for someone to have a role. The new system will have a lot of websites with roles in them. The roles will be given within a domain or website. The display will be limited to people who have this role.
The Page specific visibility settings box decides which pages the block appears on. The third option, “Show if the following PHP code returns TRUE (PHP-mode, experts only)” is not to be used, it is only for programmers.
Under Pages you can add the path of where the block should appear - for the homepage you type in <front>, for the About Us page you type in about.
Go back to the list of blocks and look at the Search block. This is like a dynamic block, created by Drupal. We can't edit the text of the block, all we can do is choose where it appears. You will notice that we can only delete some of the blocks, but the rest can be disabled. These blocks are automatically on the page.