[SOLVED] Blocks Not Showing

Try and make sure that all your files were uploaded successfully. That nothing was corrupted, skiped, or said to upload when it really wasn't. There have been some problems reported on this forum with those causes.

First, this is a skinning issue so it goes in skinning support.

After you turn the block on in the admin panel, you still need to add it edit the skin files to add it to the skin. 

Hi

As I said, I know a little html, but am very new to skins and PHP. I've looked for a tutorial on all this, and used the search option, but all I can find are answers for version 2, which may be different.

Would some kind person tell me what I need to add to the skin files to make it work? And do I need to alter the variables file as well? I'm running on Zenlike.

Incidentally, the problem I've had with custom header, footer and accept/don't accept letters appears to be  Internet Explorer. Has anyone else had this problem? I'm now using Mozilla Firefox and everything (apart from blocks) loads fine.

Thank you so much for putting up with someone new to all this

Dawn 🙂 

Also separate problems go in separate posts.

Okay, so sticking to the first problem, can someone please help me with the blocks?

Did you read all the readmes and docs that came with the 3.0 download? There is skinning help there.

I can't find anything that explains for an idiot how to activate blocks. There is a readme that says how to install diff header graphics and so on, but I don't see anything about blocks...

Did you go to the admin panel on your site? There's a link called blocks there. Click on it.

You can set each block to active, inactive or index only there. You should have all of them set to Index Only except for Who's Online and Menu. Set those two to active.

For more information see the readme's or search the forum.

What to add to your skin files and which file to add it to will depend on the skin.  Generally, if you want it to only appear on the index page you'll add it to index.tpl.  If you want it on every page, it'll go in header.tpl or footer.tpl.  All of the blocks that come with the download can be added using 2 variables {BLOCKNAME_title} and {BLOCKNAME_content} where BLOCKNAME is the name of the block.  A number of the blocks also have alternate methods for adding the content to the page.  When you're just starting to figure out how to skin, stick to the _title and _content variables.  On most skins you're going to need to add some html around the block, and what that html will be will also depend on skin.  For the skins I create, I use CSS layout and try to stick to the pattern of:

<div class="block">
<div class="title">{block_title}</div>
<div class="content">{block_content}</div>
</div>

However, since you're working with Zenlike which isn't one of my skins and is a skin that uses tables, I can't tell you exactly what to add.  You're going to have to experiment.  Good luck.

Thank you SO much! I was simply activating things on the variables and not the index template! I fiddled with it a little and the blocks are now showing as and where I add them.

Thanks to everyone who helped.

Dawn 🙂