WordPress Theme Development 5 - Sidebar

Ivan Teoh

May 4, 2009, 10:04:45 PM +1000

In the main index template file, index.php, I added sidebar include tag, get_sidebar();. This tag will include the file sidebar.php. Now, I will talk about what information will be included in this file. Your sidebar needs to support dynamic widget sidebar as well as old style sidebar. Hence, <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?> is needed. Next, it will be the search form. I include text input and submit input in the form. I also like to display a list of WordPress pages as links, a monthly archive links list, a list of categories as links and a list of bookmarks as links. Since all the links title does not have any html tag, I will remove both the default before text, <h2>, and default after text, </h2>, by adding empty string for title_after and title_before arguments in bookmark template tag. For meta tag list, I added wp_register(); for displaying either the "Register" link to users that are not logged in or the "Site Admin" link if a user is logged in. Adding some WordPress build-in feeds for allowing your friends to subscribe your blog, which is what I doing too. Lastly, wp_meta(); is added for allowing other WordPress plugin to insert content into this file. An example of this file is stated as following.

<?php /** * @package WordPress * @subpackage Your_Theme */ ?>  <ul> <?php /* Widgetized sidebar, if you have the plugin installed. */ if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?> <li> <label for="s"><?php _e('Search'); ?></label> <form id="searchform" method="get" action="<?php bloginfo('home'); ?>"> <input type="text" name="s" id="s" size="15" /><br /> <input type="submit" value="<?php _e('Search'); ?>" /> </form> </li> <?php wp_list_pages('title_li=' . __('Pages')); ?> <li><?php _e('Archives'); ?> <ul> <?php wp_get_archives('type=monthly'); ?> </ul> </li> <?php wp_list_categories('title_li=' . __('Categories')); ?> <?php wp_list_bookmarks('title_after=&title_before='); ?> <li><?php _e('Meta'); ?> <ul> <?php wp_register(); ?> <li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li> <li><a title="<?php _e('Syndicate this blog using RSS'); ?>" href="<?php bloginfo('rss2_url'); ?>"><?php _e('Blog <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS</abbr> Feed'); ?></a></li> <li><a title="<?php _e('The latest comments to all posts in RSS'); ?>" href="<?php bloginfo('comments_rss2_url'); ?>"> <?php _e('Comments <abbr title="Really Simple Syndication">RSS </abbr> Feed'); ?></a></li> <?php wp_meta(); ?> </ul> </li> <?php endif; ?> </ul>

WordPress Theme Development 5 - Sidebar

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