Adding Extra Sidebar to your Wordpress Theme
You like a Wordpress theme on the Internet but Oh!… What’s this?? The theme has only one sidebar! You need more than one and are on the verge of switching to some other theme with more sidebars. But wait!! Let me teach you how to add an extra sidebar or sidebars to your favorite theme. People who know PHP will find it easy to follow but even novices can easily do it using the code that I have provided in this tutorial. I am assuming that you already know HTML and a bit of CSS.
To begin the tutorial, extract your theme into a folder and open it to see all the files. If your theme has only one sidebar, then most probably you will NOT find a file called functions.php in your theme folder. In that case you will have to create this file yourself. Just open notepad or any other code editor to start a new file. Put this code into that file :-
<?php
if ( function_exists('register_sidebars') )
register_sidebars(2);
?>
Save the file as functions.php and put it in your theme folder. This piece of code actually tells Wordpress to register two sidebars for you (See register_sidebars(2) in the code). If your theme has more than one sidebar, you will find the functions.php file already present in your theme folder. You just have to edit the number to your requirement and save the file. You can increase this number if you want more sidebars and if your theme’s layout can accommodate it. Now, when you go to your Wordpress admin section and browse to the widgets under the menu item called presentation, you will see two sidebars listed there. You can drag your widget items into any of the sidebars.
Now comes the part where we actually build the sidebars. If your theme has only one sidebar, try to locate a file called sidebar.php in your theme folder. In this example, where we are trying to modify the theme for two sidebars, let’s rename sidebar.php to sidebar1.php and make a new blank file called sidebar2.php. Put this code into sidebar2.php and save the file :-
<div>
<ul>
<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar(2) ) : else : ?>
<?php endif; ?>
</ul>
</div>
So, we have the two sidebars ready but they have not been placed in the index.php file yet. Both these sidebars need to be called from the index.php file in order to include them in your theme. Just open the index.php file from your theme folder and locate the code that calls your sidebar file (sidebar.php earlier). It should look something like :-
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar.php'); ?>
Edit this code and change the words sidebar.php to sidebar1.php.
This takes care of the first sidebar. Now take a look at the index.php file carefully and find a suitable place to insert the second sidebar. This might involve modifying your layout or adding new divs. Once you find a suitable place, place the following code there :-
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar2.php'); ?>
Save the index.php file and now preview your theme. You will see all the widgets that you placed in both your sidebars appearing on your website. If you have not placed any widgets yet, you will not see any change. There might be alignment errors but you will have to fix them yourself. You can add more sidebars in a similar way to your Wordpress theme. I hope this tutorial helps some of you.
This is SO helpful. AND … what I’d REALLY love is a sidebar that scrolls independently, so that it remains visible no matter how far down in the blog someone scrolls.
Is there a way to implement this?
miss the code everytime, does it need tick marks or something to display
` `
Jai,
Why can this line
Not be included in this code
You can see I tried but it will not show up on index.php after the category listings.
Daily Press Theme
Thanks
Jim
Jim
@Rafael Marrero:-
As Jai mentioned, not all themes can accept the extra sidebar, mine did not. For days I adjusted css and still no good. I found “DAILY PRESS” theme here on BlogOH!Blog andit is really super. Check out my site to see it.
JIM
I currently have a theme on our website that’s a single column, no sidebar. When I followed your steps to add a sidebar I couldn’t make it all the way through the steps because it would give me errors (line3) etc. I would have to re-upload the original themes *.php files to fix it. Bottom line, What am I doing wrong?
Hey Guys,
Don’t be pernickety with Jai. I found his tutorial very useful, and I have an extra sidebar.
You do need to know a little about the inner workings of WP to get this to work, even if it is not too difficult.
Be patient!
Best,
Alex
@Jai:-
Thanks Jai, That is exactly what I thought. It would so easy to just get another theme that has what I want, but I have put in a lot of time and learning on mine, so someday i will get it all added.
THANKS
Jim
@JIM:- Jim,
Sometimes a tutorial cannot apply on every theme since every theme is built differently. You might have to do more than what’s written in the tutorial. I will advise you to take the help of a good coder because I think your theme needs more work.
@moshu:- Please read carefully all the comments that have been posted before you. People have definitely benefited and have been able to add an extra sidebar. So, please do not make superficial comments and spread hate just because you do not have the calibre to understand a tutorial.
@moshu:-
Moshu,
I have seen your expertise elsewhere. The theme I used has only one sidebar on the right. I want to add another one on the left for ads.
Please point me in the right direction to find out how to do this.
THANKS
Jim