Add Additional Sidebars to Thesis – Can Also Be Used To Make A Widgetized Footer

I was building a client’s website using Thesis and I needed to create some additional sidebars. The design called for a custom home page with 3 individual sections near the footer. I wanted to make each section a widgetized sidebar so it would be easy to add content to them using WordPress widgets.

You may have seen themes out there that have a widgetized footer which has maybe 3 or 4 sections where you can add any widget you wanted. Well, this tutorial will be useful for you if that’s what you want to do with Thesis, or just add additional widgetized sidebars.

How To Add Extra Widgetized Sidebars in Thesis

I’m not saying this is the only way to achieve this, and there may even be a better way to do it, but this definitely does the trick and worked perfectly for me.

Step 1 – Register The Sidebars

I have to give credit to Berchman for this bit of code. Actually, in his post he credits Kristarella for this code. So thank you both. But basically, open up your custom_functions.php file and add this code to it:

// Register sidebar

register_sidebars(1,
    array(
        'name' => 'Sidebar 3',
        'before_widget' => '<li class="widget %2$s" id="%1$s">',
        'after_widget' => '</li>',
        'before_title' => '<h3>',
        'after_title' => '</h3>'
    )
);

Now, if you need more than just one, simply paste that same code as many times as you want. Be sure to give each one a unique name though. After you save and upload the file to the custom folder, you will notice that the new sidebar now appears in the widgets section in WordPress.

You can drag and drop any widget you want to your new sidebar or sidebars. However, for this to work, you need to still tell WordPress where in your theme you want the sidebars to appear.

Step 2 – Where To Display The Widgets

Now all you need to do is paste in this code wherever you want the widgetized sidebar to appear:

<?php
if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('YOURSIDEBARNAMEGOESHERE') ) : ?>
     <p>This is what shows when no widgets are added.</p>
<?php endif; ?>

Obviously you will need to insert your sidebar name in the place shown above. Since we’re working in Thesis, you can’t just paste this into a footer.php file for example. So I recommend you either use the Thesis Openhook plugin or just use your custom_functions.php file to insert this code in the applicable location using Thesis hooks. A big part of this is also the CSS styling. I’m not going to get into that since you’ll want to style it in a way that works with your design, but if you have questions, leave a comment and I’ll respond. If this was helpful for you, leave a comment too!

Tagged as: thesis tips