Orphaned Blocks Option in Add Block Panel

[aembler]

We could add another item after "Gathering tiles" in the add block panel that's "Non-Displayed Blocks" or "Orphaned Blocks" (gotta find a better name for this.) that shows the blocks in a list similar to the clipboard. You could either click a delete icon to delete the block permanently or drag it into the page.

When loading the add block panel, we could check to see whether there were any areas on the page that weren't rendered. We'd want to make sure this was performant, and didn't needlessly slow down the loading of the add block panel all the time. This would also have to respect layouts. This would determine whether to show this option. Alternatively, we could just always show it. Less elegant but easier for development and less of a resource drain on every panel load.

This came from #195

[MrKarlDilkington]

I really like this idea.

Especially for pages that have dynamically named or programmatically added areas.

[MrKarlDilkington]

Another great use case for this is when users switch themes that use different area names.

From the forum:
http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/themes/remove-elemental-content/

[jheanly]

Just came across the same issue as that highlighted by MrKarlDilkington. Would be great to be able to remove content from the database that is not actually displayed on the site (and hence remove from search results)

[JohntheFish]

I would like to see thinking on this resurrected with the new layout engine being considered for v9. #6828
As well as orphaned blocks on a page-by-page basis, #195 highlights that a solution also needs to consider the problem of orphans in 1000s of pages, such as when a big site needs to change theme.

Updating the core for more effective and flexible (and hence greater use of) layouts will compound the problem.

[aembler]

Just an update on this. I think this would work this way:

1. When you open the add panel, the add controller would retrieve all areas dynamically from the template on your current page. This would be the set of valid areas.
2. Then, the add controller would retrieve all blocks in all areas for the current recent page version.
3. If there are blocks in areas that aren't in the list of areas found in the page template, the Orphaned Blocks option would be shown in the dropdown. We only show it if there are blocks that are orphaned.
4. Clicking the Orphaned blocks option loads the panel contents, just like clicking Containers or Clipboard does.
5. The display of the orphaned blocks panel is just like Clipboard – we show a preview of a block, and the ability to drag it into the page, and a delete link.
6. If you drag the block in the page, the block disappears from the panel, because you're changing its areas to the new area.
7. If you click delete, your deleting that instance of the block from that area, which should also remove it from the panel.

I think the bulk tool sounds interesting but is a separate concern.

[aembler]

This is complete and will be in version 9.