Removing Block Header

Hangin' Around Joined: Nov 06, 2006 Posts: 46

is there anyway to remove the block header? Or maybe set it where I can use my own image with text on it instead of a standard BG and font for each block?

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 6:49 am

If you wanted to remove the block header, you can edit the block in Blocks Administration and remove what is written in the title field.

Theme Guru Joined: Nov 01, 2003 Posts: 1006

the blocks all must use the same images. That is the nature of blocks. The right and left can be different with modifications but you cannot have a different "header" so to speak on each block. There used to be something called streamblocks available but I have no idea if it still works. If you do not want the text on each one you can do what jakec said but most people want to know the title for each block. Good luck

Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:24 am

corporalstorm wrote:

PostPosted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 3:08 am
is there anyway to remove the block header? Or maybe set it where I can use my own image with text on it instead of a standard BG and font for each block?

jaded wrote:

the blocks all must use the same images. That is the nature of blocks. The right and left can be different with modifications but you cannot have a different "header" so to speak on each block. There used to be something called streamblocks available but I have no idea if it still works. If you do not want the text on each one you can do what jakec said but most people want to know the title for each block. Good luck

While it is preferred that blocks use titles, it is by no means mandatory. The reason why it is preferred is in suppot of multiple languages and variable sized themes where the size of the field goes up and down dynamically depending on the resolution of the browser that the user has.

Consider that if you remove titles, you remove the ability of foreign language users to be able to "read" the title of that block as an image in place of the "$title" would be a "fixed" look that can't (obviously) be adjusted depending on the language of the user.

Now again, while the default method is the preferred one, you can in fact modify your theme to support the use of images instead of the block $title.

I want to explain that this is not a simple thing to do in that you need to call that image name "dynamically" OR adjust the block itself to echo a call to the image so that the block knows which image to use.

You also need to ensure that your image size (for the block title) matches the block size, so keep in mind that this kind of thing cannot be done to themes that use dynamic sizing. It must be a "fixed size" theme which are pretty rare these days

If you choose the dynamic method of replacing $title with an image, you would then (in that theme) modify the call by finding where it echoes the block "$title" value and replace that with a call to a fixed image (whereas the image name is the name of the block title). There is a mod out there that does this (See the "A Good Read" section below). I actually talked about this in detail in one of my articles a couple of years ago.

Anyway.... While there are a bunch of ways to do this, you should really think about it before doing it. It's a lot of work and will leave you with a "fixed" look and feel that won't be very flexible.

A Good Read On This Subject:
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An Add-On Download:
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Posted: Tue Nov 07, 2006 11:54 am

http://www.albini.net/community/download.php?view.14

this is the one that I mentioned streamblocks. I could not recall the name of the albini site or if it was still functional. It is a lot of hard work to do. 64 made the points more clear. Good luck with it.

registered · Posted: Wed Nov 08, 2006 6:23 am

corporalstorm, depending upon what you are looking to do, you could still use an image approach on a dynamic sized theme. Again, it really depends completely on the "look" you are after and whether a combination of images would do the trick as apposed to just one "fixed" one. However, I'm with Steph, you lose much in accessibility and multilingual capabilities, and, you are asking for a ton of work to get it right.

But, it is your choice to make. We can only provide the "guidance".