Blocks Layout

The Blocks Layout is a feature that allows a website administrator to define, through the Plone control panel, the default blocks that are initialized in the add form when a new Plone document is created by the website editors.

Any Dexterity content type can be made compatible with Volto blocks engine by enabling the Blocks behavior. From the Content Types Control Panel you can define the default "layout" for a particular content type. In the Block Layout page you get a regular Volto Pastanaga Blocks Editor page, but the blocks have an additional tab in the sidebar, the "block settings".

When using the content type to instantiate a new Plone content, the add form will already have the blocks from transfered from the Blocks Layout page of that content type.

The available controls in the Block Settings tab are controlled by the schema property in the block configuration:

  hero: {
    id: 'hero',
    title: 'Hero',
    icon: heroSVG,
    group: 'common',
    view: ViewHeroImageLeftBlock,
    edit: EditHeroImageLeftBlock,
    // notice the schema here
    schema: BlockSettingsSchema,
    blockSchema: HeroImageLeftBlockSchema,
    restricted: false,
    mostUsed: false,
    blockHasOwnFocusManagement: true,
    sidebarTab: 1,
  },

The generic BlockSettingsSchema allow control over the behavior of the block in the future edit pages: is the block required? is it read only? etc.

The default blocks for a content type are stored in that content type's schema, so if you want to store that GenericSetup configuration in code, you need to export the Content Types Registry.