<img src="http://forums.postnuke.com/modules/PNphpBB2/images/avatars/upload/11242169564263c92bb0043.gif" align="right" />Greetings all,  I have noted that of late many of the themes released have been conforming to the orthodox 3-column layout that has become synonymous to nuke type websites. While this is all well and good for portal type sites, sometimes one could use the flexibility of a CMS backend for personal or business websites also. This can be quite difficult if you only have 3 block positions/groups to choose from as your options can be quite limited in regards to designing innovative layout GUI's.



Enter Autotheme and Autoblocks.



The commercial version of Autotheme has had the feature of unlimited block positions (autoblocks) since early version releases, but since version 0.7 (I think) AT-Lite (the free GPL autotheme version) has also boasted this feature - earlier versions integrated with the Nuclei block enhancement and boasted 9 extra block positions which was still a great advantage over the stock standard 3 positions available to the MD-Pro CMS.



Tied in with another of autotheme features that is custom module templates / options, Autoblocks becomes an extremely powerful tool in customising the design layout of your MD-Pro website.You can set up block positions on the homepage to only show up on the homepage or define special block groups / positions to only show only for certain modules. I will now run through the procedure of setting up additional block positions using autotheme.



Step 1 Define a new Autoblock

This is easily done by accessing the autoblocks area of the Autotheme administration console. You can name the autoblock anything you want although it is best to give a good descriptive title to aid in recognition due to the fact that this name will be associated with the block group in the CMS blocks administration area. eg home_top_left

<img src="http://postnuke.co.nz/tutorials/autotheme/1.gif" />



Step 2 Assign a Block Template to the Autoblock Postion

You can use an existing block template or create a new one if you wish. Note that here I am defining this block template to only show on the homepage, I can also define it in the "general" area to show for all modules or even of an individual custom module (I could assign a completely different block temlpate for these if I wish). 


<img src="http://postnuke.co.nz/tutorials/autotheme/2.gif" />



Step 3 Add the block tag to your page template