There's a lot of contexts where the left sidebar is blank, mainly when

  1. displaying a node that doesn't belong to a group,
  2. displaying a view

In the case of (1), perhaps it might work to either theme out the sidebar when it has no content, or an easy filler would be to have a few blocks in there, just recent content like the group node blocks.

In the case of (2), it seems that group views should have the same blocks on them as do group nodes? With non-group views could again either theme out the sidebar when no content, or have recent content block from other content types (i.e. events on announcements / announcements on events).

CommentFileSizeAuthor
#2 blank_sidebar-1515116-2.patch1.24 KBlightsurge
#1 leftsidebar.png8.93 KBlightsurge

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lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented
StatusFileSize
new leftsidebar.png8.93 KB

forgot to add screenshot

lightsurge’s picture

lightsurge commented
Status: Active » Needs review
StatusFileSize
new blank_sidebar-1515116-2.patch1.24 KB

Patch below gets rid of the left indent in region-content-wrapper when sidebars are empty. A node would probably look better with some blocks in the sidebar, but doesn't hurt to get rid of the space when there's nothing to fill it?

jgraham’s picture

jgraham commented
Assigned: Unassigned » penguininja
penguininja’s picture

penguininja commented

We've been working on eliminating the pages without a sidebar to at least include some helpful empty text. In particular, the meta feature sets to enable calendar and news blocks for all Athletics groups, Department groups, etc. hit a lot of these pages.

1. displaying a node that doesn't belong to a group

I'd rather not theme away the empty sidebar, as I'd like to find some relevant sidebar info for every page, defaulting to sitewide news and events. I'll add these default blocks as soon as I get a chance.

2. displaying a view

I'd love for these views to show the relevant group content; I'll look into how to make that happen, as those view pages do not get the group context needed to trigger those block.

penguininja’s picture

penguininja commented
Assigned: penguininja » jgraham

For nodes not in a group, we'll be using general blocks (e.g. all news, all events, etc.). That currently depends on fixing the "not in any group" setting on context_og, ticket #1505248: Not in any group checkbox not working as expected.

For views that have a "group affiliation," we'll be writing some custom code to give those pages a group context, i.e., pages like /announcements/8 should get the gid=8 group context. Assigning this ticket to Jeff.

jgraham’s picture

jgraham commented
Status: Needs review » Fixed

Fixed the "group affiliation" pages for calendar/GID and announcemnts/GID in commit e2c1eab

I think in combination with #1505248: Not in any group checkbox not working as expected this ticket is addressed.

Status: Fixed » Closed (fixed)

Automatically closed -- issue fixed for 2 weeks with no activity.