4.5 – Layout boxes per page

A layout box is a box with content of its own that the plugin quartz-layout-box places at one spot of the page layout — the word mark at the top, the box “About this handbook” on the left, the box “Read on” below the text. This template has seven of them; what each does stands in 5.5 – Layout boxes. Here it is about how a single page can have one of them differently.

This page controls two of them through its own frontmatter:

---
layoutBoxNote: false
layoutBoxCta:
  html: "<p>A different text, on this page only.</p>"
---

What you should see: the box “About this handbook” in the left column is missing here — on every other page it is there. And the box below this text shows different content than usual.

The three forms

In the frontmatter	Effect
layoutBoxNote: false	hide the box on this page
layoutBoxNote: other.md	load a different snippet from the same folder
layoutBoxNote: {html: "…"}	set your own content; {file: "…"} and {hidden: true} work too

In the long form the key takes six fields: hidden, file, html, title, collapsible and collapsed. A page may therefore also rename its box or fold it away, not just refill it.

The six keys of this template

Key	Place	What the box is
layoutBoxMark	header	the word mark, one image per colour scheme
layoutBoxPageName	header	the chapter name beside the site name
layoutBoxNote	left column	“About this handbook”, from a Markdown file, collapsible
layoutBoxCta	after the content	“Read on”, with placeholders
layoutBoxHint	after the content	a hint, on narrow screens only
layoutBoxColophon	footer	the colophon line

The seventh instance has no key: it outputs nothing but a <style> marking the folder you are standing in, and there is nothing about it a single page would want differently.

Why every instance has a key of its own

Without frontmatterKey in the configuration a single layoutBox: false would switch off all boxes at once. The template therefore gives every instance a name of its own — which is also the procedure the plugin documents for multiple use.

When the frontmatter is the right place — and when it is not

What holds for this one page belongs here. What holds for every page of one language belongs in the configuration under byLang — otherwise the same exception stands in a hundred files. That is exactly what happened here once: the English pages carried their four boxes themselves, until the plugin got byLang. See The instances.

When both apply, the frontmatter wins. The order is:

1. this page’s frontmatter
2. byLang for this page’s language
3. the entry’s base setting

This page is the proof of it: in both languages its box below the text shows its own text from the frontmatter, but carries the heading byLang sets for that language.