Blocks are items which may be added to the left or right or centre column of any page in Moodle. They may also be added to the centre of the Dashboard.
A block can be used throughout Moodle to add additional information to a page. There are many blocks on your platform, such as:
- Logged In Users - Shows users active in the last 5 minutes.
- Course Completion Status - Shows the user how they are progressing through a course.
- RoadMap - A block designed to show a user a selection of courses.
- RoadMap Replay - A Block to reset a course automatically for annual compliance.
- HTML Block - A HTML section for you to add text, images or links.
A "Block" is a 'template' of something to show, such as adding a block to the dashboard and adding the same block to a course page will create two 'block instances'. This is useful when using multiple HTML blocks across the platform to provide different information, however each Logged In Users instance will show the same information so this can become harder to manage.
To simplify managing blocks you can use block settings to configure where a block appears. A block added to the dashboard is displayed exclusively on the dashboard page. Whereas a block added to a course page can appear on "Any type of Main course page', "Any course page" or "Any Page". As an example a HTML block with course specific information may only appear on that course. However a "Course Feedback" may appear on any course page.
Additionally a block created on a course page could be displayed in activities within that course. A block created on the front page can be displayed throughout the site.
It is always worth investigating these settings or getting in touch to explore adding a block to multiple areas to prevent duplicating instances and creating more work in the future if you want to modify the block.