title: Custom block (layout?) containing other blocks in Concrete5
body: <p>I make a number of websites for clients who are... less than tech savvy... and need an easy means of editing their website after I've made it for them. For this purpose I have been coding a lot of my sites in Concrete5.</p>
  
  <p>Recently I received a project to translate <a href="http://www.windowfashionsonwheels.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.windowfashionsonwheels.com</a> to Concrete5. A quick glance at the source-code reveals that it's nothing but tables inside of tables... It's pretty hideous. I've been steadily working to rebuild the exact appearance and structure using minimal HTML and CSS, but I ran into one small bump.</p>
  
  <p>On the main page if you scroll down just slightly there is a light-grey box along the left side of the main body containing four different blocks of content. This section has a different background color, rounded corners, and even gradient borders just to make my job a little bit harder.</p>
  
  <p>I can mostly emulate the appearance of this box by creating a single Content block in Concrete5 and applying a custom Design to it (background color, CSS3 rounded corners, and CSS3 image borders). However since this relies heavily on CSS3 it doesn't display properly in older browsers or Internet Explorer, plus it only allows me a single Content block to work with (not ideal if I wanted to have text AND a slideshow or some other block within the same light-grey square)</p>
  
  <p>I could easily add this light-grey square to the theme itself, however it doesn't appear on all pages. It also seems like too much work to create two different Page Types, one for pages with this grey box and another for pages without.</p>
  
  <p>I could also create a custom template for the Content block which generates these <code>&lt;div&gt;</code> objects, allowing me to place them in arbitrary locations on any page which I desire - however this would only allow the light-grey box to contain a single Content block. It would not allow me to have, say, a Content block and a Slideshow block in the same box.</p>
  
  <p>I could also add an HTML block, but I wish to assume that my client has no knowledge of HTML and I want her to be able to edit her own page.</p>
  
  <p>The ideal solution would be to create a block which generates this new background and borders (using multiple <code>&lt;div&gt;</code> objects to create rounded corners and such the old fashioned way) then allow placement of blocks within this block so I could have any sort of content I want. However as far as I am aware, Concrete5 doesn't allow blocks inside of blocks. It does, however, allow blocks inside of layouts - but as far as I know layouts are intended for multi-column pages, not specialized borders.</p>
  
  <p>If anyone has experience with Concrete5 and has a solution to my problem, please help.</p>