How to Block or Unblock Portlets (Ploud6)

Blocking portlets

Blocking portlets is an alternative to deleting or hiding them. Where deleting a portlet destroys it entirely, and hiding it will make it disappear from every place it would show up on your site, blocking allows you to disable portlets in a specific folder while still showing them in others. The downside of blocking is that it can only be done at a "portlet group" level - meaning that you can either show ALL portlets that come from the parent folder or show NONE of them.

1. Navigate to the folder or content item on which you would like to block a set of portlets.
2. Click on the Manage Portlets button at the bottom of the row of portlets on the right or left side of the page. This will bring you to the Portlet Management screen.
3. Above each group of portlets is a dropdown menu with a few options: Block, Do not block, and (for Group and Content-Type portlets) Use parent settings. These settings only affect the side of the screen on which it's chosen.
   1. Block will stop all portlets from higher-level folders from appearing in the current location. 
   2. Do not block will allow portlets from higher-level folders to appear in the current location. This is the default setting. 
   3. Use parent settings will look at the setting from the immediate parent folder of the current item to decide whether portlets should be blocked or shown.
4. After making your selection, click Save settings.
5. Click Return in the center content area to go back to the item you were modifying and see your updates.

When should you block portlets? 

This feature is handy when a parent folder contains a portlet (for example, a calendar or an RSS feed) that you don't want to show up in one of its child folders. Say you've got an Events listing on the right-hand side of your home page, but you don't want to see it when you navigate to the News & Events folder, since it would be redundant there. 

IF you're okay with blocking ALL portlets that come from the parent folder, you can go to Manage portlets for the child folder and, under Parent portlets, click Block. This will stop all portlets from the parent folder from being displayed in the current folder. 

Note that this has to be done per portlet well - blocking portlets on the right side of the page will not impact the ones on the left side of the page, and vice versa. 

You can also block Group Portlets or Content-Type portlets in the same manner. Blocking affects the folder in which the setting is changed, but not child folders (unless you tell it to by using the "Use Parent Settings" option, which is only available for Group Portlets and Content Type Portlets).