WoltLab Community Framework 2.x introduced dashboard boxes as a unified way to place additional content on different pages. It did that job just fine, but there were still a few more things they could've done to provide more flexibility and comfort to the administrator. WoltLab Suite Core 3.0 replaces this with a top notch box system ready to ease your life as an administrator.
It is recommended that you take a look at the new WoltLab Suite Core 3.0: Pages first.
List, Search and Filter
The box management has received the same filter controls as previously seen for pages, giving you the ideal tools to work with even the largest sets of boxes.
Adding Custom Boxes
Most of the time users will use the built-in WYSIWYG editor to create their boxes, offering an easy solution for structured and formatted content without requiring any knowledge of HTML. For those of you who would like to go beyond that, you can also chose to provide raw HTML instead without limitations, and optionally utilize full template scripting with HTML.
Boxes offer an additional type called 'System', backed by PHP classes provided by apps and plugins.
Creating a Custom Box Using the System Type
The screenshot above illustrates the creation of a custom box that will display threads from the selected forum 'Another Forum'. The controller at the top of the form controls what kind of content is displayed in this box and also offers individual configuration options as seen in the lower-half.
The 'Settings' section is dynamic and currently displays the options for a list of threads, it is entirely up to the controller which settings are provided, there are no limitations. In the example it should display the latest 5 threads from the selected forum, but there are a lot more options including activity and most notable threads.
Each controller can be used in multiple boxes, for instance you could have two distinct boxes where one lists only threads from one section of your forum while the second box covers everything else. You could even back individual CMS pages with a custom set of boxes displaying only content relevant to that page, lifting the restrictions of the previous dashboard boxes that only have one single central configuration option.
Visible Everywhere and Nowhere
You can freely control the visibility of your boxes per page, both to display it everywhere or only in very specific locations. The setting to display it everywhere is actually a toggle and will change the functionality of the list below as you can see on the next screenshot. It also shows the live filter which helps you quickly tracking down the page you're looking for:
Permissions
Custom boxes are visible for everyone by default and in case this doesn't match your expectations, you're free to restrict the visibility to users and user groups of your choice.
Available Placeholders
Boxes can be placed in 10 different placeholders which are available on every page. The blue center box marks the position where the regular content goes, of course the space for box placeholders is only occupied if there are boxes, the image above is an extreme example to show-case each individual position.
