[chris_bcn]

Are there any Drupal people on here. I'm using it for a new project and getting increasinly frustrated. We have someone building thte backjen in Drupal who is telling me that it's very difficult to give me access to the HTML of the blocks.

Or rather the content of the blocks. I can edit the block.tpl.php file, and alter the containers, but I want to edit the content of the $content variable (all I want to do is change a <ul> to a <dl>, and change the wording of the login block).

<div id="block-<?php print $block->module .'-'. $block->delta; ?>" class="block block-<?php print $block->module ?>">

  <?php if ($block->subject): ?>
    <h2 class="title"><?php print $block->subject; ?></h2>
  <?php endif; ?>

  <div class="content">
    <?php print $block->content; ?> <--- I want to edit the content of this variable
  </div>

</div><!-- /block-inner, /block -->

I can't believe that a CMS would make it that difficult for the designer to alter the markup. Is there an easy way.

Movable Type is frustrating but I'm longing to use it again after this experience. I don't know if it's a limitation of the platform or the engineer.

[theneemies]

Drupal is working hard to bring designers into its world! Hopefully the following will clarify some of your theming questions:

- themes are for presentation only (not for modifying content)
- modules for functionality (data access and manipulation)
- and content is edited via the web interface

To edit the content of your block, you would need to use the web interface (login -> admin -> site building -> blocks -> configure the block you're interested in).

It sounds like you're specifically looking at the login block, so the following should help you: (sorry, weird url rule is preventing me from posting a link) drupal. org / node /19855

[chris_bcn]

Thanks for the reply

I want to be able to edit the $content of all the different blocks - not the content, but the markup

e.g. the sidebar has 6 different blocks and I want to be able to alter the markup on an individual basis. I don't want to just use CSS to make it look how I want, I want the markup to be correct too.

One of the sidebar blocks for example lists the most recent entries. It outputs an <ul> and I want it to be a <ol> - how do I change that

Designers don't just want to change the presentation they also want control over the mark up - I don't want a program to spit put markup.

Unfortunately this seems almost impossible - I'm driving our Engineer mad with my demand for control. I just can't believe it's this difficult - makes me never want to use Drupal again. It so unweildy.

Great if you don't care about markup I guess - annoying if you do

[theneemies]

No fear, once you get a clearer Drupal-picture, the theming will sort itself out.

Regarding separation of content and presentation - that is only possible as much as web content allows. I can't imagine how a module would handle generating content for web display without any markup at all Also, as the name suggests, $content is 'the content'; however, it is still available for manipulation in your theme's template.php

For each of the blocks you're interested in, your would need to navigate to admin -> site building -> blocks -> configure them individually. This could be:

- configuring existing ones or
- creating new blocks with only the HTML/PHP you're interested in
--- if you want a list of Recent Posts which uses ol instead of ul, create a block, use PHP to get the data, and embed the HTML you're interested in.

Have you tried posting your questions on drupal. org /forum? Chances are responses will be quicker and more detailed there.