Since I accepted an answer in the other forum question Need newbie instructions for assigning layouts to nodes, moving part two of that question here, followed by some immediate answers from testing:

------

One more question that's apropos for this thread. I'm thinking about using layout visibility rules to use Moscone Flipped for anonymous users, and Taylor for authenticated users. That way, there's an additional sidebar on the right, which I can reserve for members-only blocks and navigation. Docs explain that there's an ordering in Layouts that determines what people see, which I assume I can figure out when I get there if visibility doesn't do it entirely.

What's unclear to me:

  1. I would like to have the Taylor layout inherit the Moscone Flipped layout for the regions that can be mapped 1-to-1, so if I change the Default layout I don't need to remember to do that for Taylor pages. Seems like this is not possible?
  2. Given the problems I'm having changing layouts for a single page, I'm guessing I need dead simple instructions for how to do a different default layout that applies to an entire set of pages. Is it as simple as creating visibility filters based on User status? I'm not sure how to put the layout path wildcard in such that it applies to the entire site, unless that's just a % character.
  3. Finally: since some pages will have custom layouts as per the above, and I guess the Home page is also in this category, does that mean I have to maintain an entirely separate set of layouts with 1-to-1 matches for authenticated users? Doable but more than I'd prefer to manage.

------

So, surprisingly and happily, when I switched to Taylor all the blocks in Moscone just showed up there, no modifications necessary. And the question about setting layouts per-page is answered in the other thread. But as for other points raised there:

The second sidebar region does not go away when empty, or when it has blocks that are not permissioned for the user. It just hangs around as big ol' white space. Might be something I can fix with the instructions in the other thread I started, Making CSS changes to Backdrop CMS default theme (Basis), if that's a CSS thing, but I haven't gotten to that yet. If anyone can point me to the right place, much appreciated.

Placeholder for more questions—I have to dash but I'm sure there will be more in a few hours when I come back to kick more tires.

Comments

1) If you change templates for a specific layout, Backdrop will put blocks into the right region if there is a similarly named region. If you create a custom layout, Backdrop might not be able to figure this out, but in working with core layouts it works pretty good. 

But, I don't think there is any way to inherit settings for blocks from one layout to another. I don't think you can create a custom layout for "posts" that inherits blocks settings from "front page" layout. 

2) I mentioned in the other thread that Taylor might not be "fluid" (automatically fill extra space). You should be able to fix this with CSS and/or modifying the Taylor layout. 

I strongly suspect you can do this with CSS only, but if you need to change the markup you can copy the Taylor layout into your layouts/ directory and it will override the core layout.