Punch hole in FPC for a static block inside a CMS page, without a custom module

Question

On the homepage of our site, we have 3 banners which are contained in a static block inside the CMS page of my homepage.

The static block also contains a widget, the widget select random banners every time.

When i turn on FPC the banners are always the same, while i want that content to change.

So now i am wondering how to punch a hole for that section of the page. It is a seperate phtml file if that makes things easier.

I have been reading about placeholders, which i may be able to implement but the "block" section in these refer to a model/action which i don't have...

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, i am stuck and have no idea where to move from here.

Some Magento documentation says, i should be able to punch a hole (only) in Category view pages, Product view pages, CMS pages but doesn't explain how...

here's my static block which i want to exclude from FPC:

<div class="three-up">
<ul>
    <li>
        <div class="promo">{{widget type="enterprise_banner/widget_banner" display_mode="fixed" rotate="shuffle" banner_ids="5,6,7" template="banner/widget/block.phtml" unique_id="5dc648821230ac32e92657639db02dbe"}}<h2><a href="{{store url=''}}jam-collection.html?k1" >Shop Jam &raquo;</a></h2></div></li>
    <li>
        <div class="promo">{{widget type="enterprise_banner/widget_banner" display_mode="fixed" banner_ids="3" template="banner/widget/block.phtml" unique_id="9e62c67346ce7fc53bac7f15b927f916"}}<h2><a href="{{store url=''}}-collection.html?k2" >Shop &raquo;</a></h2></div></li>
    <li>
        <div class="promo">{{widget type="enterprise_banner/widget_banner" display_mode="fixed" banner_ids="4" template="banner/widget/block.phtml" unique_id="2aa38aac002658c09283c8ad02626eaf"}}<h2><a href="{{store url=''}}-collection.html?k2" >Shop &raquo;</a></h2></div>
     </li>
</ul>

Answer 1

Challenge

Your biggest hurdle here is that your static block does not hole punch by default, but widgets will hole-punch automatically. So your goal should be to output all 3 widget rotators without the use of a static block.

So, then, my suggestion is that you get rid of the static block approach and instead create block reference areas to target with your widget. Classy Llama has a list of default regions available on their blog, referenced here:

Breadcrumbs

Left Column

Main Content Area

My Cart Extra Actions

Navigation Bar

Page Bottom

Page Footer

Page Header

Page Top

Right Column

Store Language

How to do it:

Creating a block reference is easy:

Define the block in layout XML:

<default>
    <reference name="content">
        <block type="core/text_list" name="some_block_name" as="some.block.name" translate="label">
            <label>Widget Rotator Target Region</label>
        </block>
    </reference>
</default>

And then you'll need to echo it from your template to force it and all dynamically inserted widget blocks to render:

#file: 1column.html
<?php echo $this->getChildHtml('some_block_name'); ?>

Then, it should show up in your widget list:

This should output in your template now when FPC is enabled wrapped in hole punch comments.

Cheers!

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Image and bullet content sourced from:

http://www.classyllama.com/blog/widgets-magento-enteprise