Using Sidebar Templates
You can create separate sidebar templates for different pages of your site by using a simple include statement. When you write an include statement, you're simply telling WordPress that you want it to include a specific file on a specific page.
The code that pulls the usual Sidebar template (sidebar.php) into all the other templates, such as the Main Index template (index.php), looks like this:
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
What if you create a page and want to use a sidebar that has different information from what you have in the Sidebar template (sidebar.php)? Follow these steps:
- Create a new sidebar template in a text editor such as Notepad.
See Book VI for information on template tags and themes.
- Save the file as sidebar2.php.
In Notepad, choose File
Save. When you're asked to name the file, type sidebar2.php, and then click Save. - Upload sidebar2.php to your Themes folder on your Web server.
See Book II, Chapter 2 for FTP information, and review Book VI for information on how to locate the Themes folder.
The template is now in your list of theme files on the Edit Themes page (log in to your WordPress Dashboard and click Editor in the Appearance drop-down list).
- To include the sidebar2.php template in one of your page templates, replace the code:
<?php get_sidebar(); /> with the code <?php get_template_part(‘sidebar2’); ?> (which calls in a template you've created within your theme).
By using that get_template_part function, you can include virtually any file in any of your WordPress templates. You can use this method to create footer templates for pages on your site, for example. First, create a new template that has the filename footer2.php. Then locate the following code in your template:
<?php get_footer(); ?>
and replace it with this code:
<?php get_template_part('footer2'), ?>
You can do multiple things with WordPress to extend it beyond the blog. The few practical examples in this chapter that use the default Twenty Ten theme show you how to use WordPress to create a fully functional Web site that has a CMS platform — anything from the smallest personal site to a large business site.