2.1. Using NewsFlash Regions

NewsFlash provides 12 regions that you can publish blocks to (along with a region for the Suckerfish menu.) The NewsFlash Regions Page shows each of the available regions. Looking at this page will give you a feel for where the regions are in relation to the one another.

The Basics

First, let's get the terminology down. A Drupal page typically includes a Content area and, optionally, one or more Blocks, which are published to Regions.

The Content area is the main part of the page, and is made up of Nodes. A node can be a story, a blog post, a forum post, or a custom node type. For the most part, Drupal manages the Content area, and you direct it using the Drupal administion menus.

A Region is essentially a physical place on the page. For example, a left sidebar region might be provided to display something to the left of the Content area. Regions are provided by the theme, and different themes will provide a different selection of regions.

A Block is a piece of content. Blocks can have a title and body text. In order to display a Block on your site, you publish it to a Region. In selecting a Region for a particular Block, you are determining where on the page that Block will be displayed.

Collapsible Regions

NewsFlash Regions are grouped into collapsible sections. The User1, User2, and User3 regions are the blocks below the masthead. We collectively call these three regions Section1. Similarly, User4, User5, and User6 make up Section2.

In order to display a Section, simply publish a block to one of the User Regions in that Section. If you publish to only one User Region in a Section, that Region will fill the width of the page. Publish to two or to all three User Regions in a Section, and the Regions will split the horizontal space accordingly.

Similarly, if you publish content to the Left or Right Sidebars, they will appear. Publish nothing to one of the sidebars and it collapses out of sight.

If you publish nothing to one of the sidebars, the main Content area will grow to fill the horizontal space normally taken by the sidebar. Publish to none of the sidebars and the main Content area will fill the width of the page.

A region will stretch vertically as much as necessary to display the content you publish to it. You can publish as many blocks to an individual region as you want. When you publish more than one block to a region, the blocks are stacked vertically atop one another. You can determine the order that blocks appear within a region by configuring the Weight of each block.