Ok, this is my second (and last for the moment!) skinning issue:

In a DNN site I am developing, the site owner really likes a certain container in the new containers package and wants to basically group three modules into one container on all pages. So, on the left pane of the site, he wants to wrap the following existing modules in one container - a text/HTML module with some welcome text, an announcements module and another small text/html module underneath with some additional text.

All three modules are to be grouped in one container in the left pane and shown on all pages. There are three solutions I can think of to doing this, please let me know what you think:

1.) Just add the markup for the container to the left column in the skin (as I want it to appear on all pages) and set the "LeftPane" id within the container body. This is great, but then I need to reference the container.css file in my skin and also makes a mess of skin/container separation.

2.) Just have one Text/HTML module with a container set on the left pane and manually add announcements / welcome text to it as I see fit. This is the easiest of all options, but the site already has the modules on - this is a skin change so I don't really want to do that. Plus I lose announcements functionality.

3.) Is it possible to group several modules in one container via the existing framework? Or, would it be possible to develop a custom module that allowed other child modules to be inserted into it - so the parent module would have a container set and child modules would have hidden containers?

 - nr3 would be the most elegant solution but since I don't know much about module development (yet!) I couldnt say whether this was possible or not.

The skins/containers are all ascx with code behind so if there's any tricks that can be done in code please let me know.

Thanks a lot!

AndyB

IMO, if a part of the interface should be on all pages and it has to contain several modules, it should be part of the skin, not the container.

I would all the HTML/CSS you need from the container to the skin

The solution Peter mentions is great but would require you to readd the modules I think.

BTW, did you consider adding the intro and footer text to the header and footer of the announcement module (if it doesn't change much)?

Thanks for posting your solutions to this problem. Here are my thoughts:

 - I'd like to add the parent container to the skin directly as markup and have the pane within the container markup, but then I'd have to reference the container.css file for that container from the skin. Not something I'd really like to do.

- I didn't think about stacking modules with a top-middle-bottom container so it looks like one continuous container. Im going to try that - its a really good idea! It also separates the containers from the skin nicely. I thought there'd be a gap between modules but it seems not from your example.

- The module wrappers for sale, thanks for that. I was trying to search for various things like "Module Parent" "Child Module in module" but module wrapper is the correct search term. Im going to investigate this more as it looks interesting. Id also be interested in writing one as I'd like to get into module development. Where could I start? (ie: how can I inject a content pane within an ascx control?)

- Finally, I didnt realise that the announcements module had header/footer. This may just work in this case as that's all they need. For more complex scenarios I appreciate the other ideas - I will bear them in mind.

Thank you for your suggestions! :)