Posted by JustAUser on Thu, Jan 15, 2026 - 6:35pm

Very frustrated beginning user here. I'm not trying to write any PHP. I am just trying to use the provided functionality, I think. I want to control visibility by user id, which seems to be possible on the basis of a user's uid. But for the life of me, I cannot see where to view or set a user's uid. Also, I keep losing the page where I was trying to set the visibility filter and have trouble finding it again. It would be nice if the search function could show the way. Perhaps, a functionality I should request?

Any help will be greatly appreciated. And, yes, I did search for answers. I searched "visibility",  "user::uid", "uid", and others.

Thanks in advance.

Comments

Fri, Jan 16, 2026 - 12:44am by yorkshirepudding

Hi. Welcome to Backdrop. Out of the box, there are two places you can set visibility by user ID and they are related:

  • The layout configure screen under "Visibility conditions" (admin/structure/layouts/manage/LAYOUT_MACHINE_NAME/configure) - accessed via Admin Bar > Structure > Layouts > Layout name > Configure layout
  • For individual blocks you have the ability to add Visibility conditions. You manage these on the Manage Blocks screen of each layout (admin/structure/layouts/manage/LAYOUT_MACHINE_NAME) accessed via Admin Bar > Structure > Layouts > Layout name

To find user IDs you can go to Manage user accounts (admin/people/list) accessed via Admin Bar > User accounts > Manage user accounts. If you hover over edit you will see the URL which includes the User ID (user/USER_ID/edit?destination=admin/people/list). Also, if you click edit, you will see the User ID in the address bar with same pattern. If you find this is a common need, you can customise that View to add the User ID in the table.