I just put a 3' ficus tree in this pot & stand attached below.

My concern is that the drainage hole on the bottom of the pot is still going to be blocked by the center metal piece of the stand. How does anyone keep these kind of ceramic pots with bottom hole and not have it blocked?

It won't be blocked, but it could be very messy.

Capillarity is what makes a sponge or paper towel pull water upward into the absorbent material. You can see that the force of capillarity can defy gravity. What happens when you water is, the pull of gravity on the water will cause it to drain from the pot until the force of gravity and the capillary pull of the soil are equal - then it stops draining. As long as there isn't a tight seal between the plant the pot rests on and the hole, the weight of the water (gravitational flow potential) will push water out of the drain hole and keep pushing it right off of the plate the pot is resting on.

If you water in sips so no water ever exits the drain hole, minerals and salts will build up in the soil and make it difficult for the plant to efficiently take up and move water to all the plant's parts. You probably don't want to, but you're going to need a collection saucer, and the bottom of the pot should be above any water that collects in the saucer so the dissolved solids/salts flushed out of the soil have no pathway back into the pot.
Al

tapla said: It won't be blocked, but it could be very messy.

Capillarity is what makes a sponge or paper towel pull water upward into the absorbent material. You can see that the force of capillarity can defy gravity. What happens when you water is, the pull of gravity on the water will cause it to drain from the pot until the force of gravity and the capillary pull of the soil are equal - then it stops draining. As long as there isn't a tight seal between the plant the pot rests on and the hole, the weight of the water (gravitational flow potential) will push water out of the drain hole and keep pushing it right off of the plate the pot is resting on.

If you water in sips so no water ever exits the drain hole, minerals and salts will build up in the soil and make it difficult for the plant to efficiently take up and move water to all the plant's parts. You probably don't want to, but you're going to need a collection saucer, and the bottom of the pot should be above any water that collects in the saucer so the dissolved solids/salts flushed out of the soil have no pathway back into the pot.
Al

So if I put the ceramic pot in a collection saucer and put that assembly in the stand I should be ok?

So my ceramic pot is 12" diameter. The stand has interior 12" diameter. If I get a collection saucer that would need to be 12" internal diameter which I can't seem to find in ceramic.

You could use a smaller saucer if you set the pot up on blocks (attractive blocks). That would also ensure the waste water that exits the drain hole has no pathway back into the pot. Something like this, but less jarring to the eye:

You could also use the pot you bought as a cache pot. Your tree would be in a different pot that slips out of the white pot for watering purposes, and gets returned to the cache pot after it stops draining ..... if you can manage the size/weight of the planting.

There is one potential problem with using a smaller collection saucer. There might be some tendency for the water to cling to the underside of the bottom of the pot and flow horizontally to the edge of the pot and drip off outside the saucer. You can prevent that from happening by buying a tube of silicone and applying it in a circle around the drain hole so it sticks up from the surface about 1/4" or so. When the pot is righted so the silicone surrounds the drain hole on the outside bottom of the pot, the water won't flow past that dam, and will drop straight down into the collection saucer.

Al

You could take the pot out of the stand, water and, after it's done dripping, put it back.

OR put pot risers under the pot on the cross bars on the stand and let the pot drip to wherever you thought it was going to drip.

OR build tapla's rube goldberg machine ...

Your choice.