total newb to umbraco, seems like a very well constructed system.I'm having a little bit of trouble in the outset here..

Is there anyway to efficiently accomplish the following structure:

<nav> [already done]

<doc main body> [already done]

<explicitly called content block1> [seemingly difficult to accomplish ?]

<explicitly called content block2>

<explicitly called content block3>

I've created doctypes of contentBlock that sit at a sibling level to the site tree. The content block calls are where I'm finding some difficulty. Ive managed to get the $currentPage source from the root onwards, but when using the xpath to select explicit contentBlock nodes I get erratic [or no] results...

I'm printing essentially the entire document tree with this:

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/parent::*">
            <xsl:value-of select="."/>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:template>

so I can see the root/contentBlock/contentBlock@nodeName='column' path I'm looking for....

<root>

...

    <contentBlock id="1077" parentID="-1" level="1" writerID="1" creatorID="1" nodeType="1075" template="1076" sortOrder="3" createDate="2010-08-12T18:53:52" updateDate="2010-08-12T18:55:38" nodeName="contentBlocks" urlName="contentblocks" writerName="montana" creatorName="montana" path="-1,1077" isDoc="">
        <content></content>
        <contentBlock id="1078" parentID="1077" level="2" writerID="1" creatorID="1" nodeType="1075" template="1076" sortOrder="1" createDate="2010-08-12T18:54:47" updateDate="2010-08-13T14:28:10" nodeName="column" urlName="column" writerName="montana" creatorName="montana" path="-1,1077,1078" isDoc="">
            <content>
                <p>content in column</p></content>
        </contentBlock>
    </contentBlock>
</root>

I'm trying to isolate the contentBlock @nodeName='column' and print it's child content node in order to create a standardized global medallion block that will persist throughout this particular template.

my xpath / selector is failing miserably however...I've tried almost every possible iteration of the following I can think of that should work...

This works but is woefully inefficient... pretty much every explicit path I've tried has failed however, eg /root/contentBlock/contentBlock

    <xsl:template match="/">
        <xsl:for-each select="$currentPage/parent::*">
            <xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
            <xsl:for-each select="descendant-or-self::* [@nodeName = 'column']">
                <xsl:value-of select="name()"/>
                :
                <xsl:value-of select="."/>
                <br />
            </xsl:for-each>
        </xsl:for-each>
    </xsl:template>

Really what I want to do is super simple, and should work as follows:

    <xsl:template match="/root/contentBlock/contentBlock [@nodename='column']">

I just don't quite know how to properly do that ^. any suggestions?