How do I negate a condition?

Thank you for your kind words. Currently it is not possible to negate conditions.

I see two possibilites for your case:
1. Select every page that the sidebar should be displayed with instead
2. Create a new sidebar for the one specified page

A manual for this plugin with some illustrative examples would be really helpful! Is there one that I just haven’t found yet? I am still struggling with figuring out how Condition Groups work and how to specify conditions. The behavior seems a bit erratic when you have to figure out the logic by trial and error.

Are conditions within a condition group AND:ed while different condition groups are OR:ed?

An example of frustrating trial and error:

I first made Sidebar A (Singular & Archive) that replaces Primary Sidebar with an empty condition group.

Result: Sidebar A shows on all posts and pages but not on archives.

Then I changed Sidebar A by adding the following condition group:
– All Categories

Result: Now Sidebar A shows on all posts and archives but it disappeared from pages.

Then I changed Sidebar A by adding the following condition group:
– All Categories
– All Posts
– All Pages

Result: Now Sidebar A shows only on posts, not on pages or archives.

Then I changed Sidebar A by using two condition groups:
– All Posts
– All Categories
—–
– All Pages

Result: Now Sidebar A shows on posts and pages but not on archives.

Then I changed Sidebar A by changing the two condition groups:
– All Posts
– All Pages
—–
– All Categories

Result: Finally Sidebar A shows on all posts, pages and archives. (We’re getting closer…)

Then I made Sidebar B (Singular) which replaces Primary Sidebar with the following condition group:
– Sample Page

Result: Sidebar B doesn’t show at all

Then I changed Sidebar B to replace Sidebar A

Result: Sidebar B shows on Sample Page while Sidebar A shows on all other pages, posts and archives.

That’s what I wanted! Phew…

In reality I tried a lot more combinations, but I think you get the point. A manual would really help.

I still love this plugin, but it sure has a steep learning curve.

Unfortunately there is no manual except the FAQ section and this forum, not because I do not want to document the functionality, but because I do not have time.

You are correct that conditions in a group are AND’ed and each group is OR’ed.

It is great that you ended up with the setup you wanted. That an empty condition group does not make a sidebar show up on archives sounds like a bug, but the rest I will explain:

If you have a condition group:
“All Pages and All Categories”
You are actually saying you want the sidebar to be displayed with all pages that is in any category. This cannot be satisfied by a default install of WordPress, because pages do not support the category taxonomy.

If you have a condition group:
“All Posts and All Categories”
It will not be displayed on the category archives, because the archive does not recognize the post type, and because the conditions are AND’ed, they will not be satisfied.

When you make a sidebar (A) replace/merge with a host sidebar across (nearly) all sections of a site and then want another sidebar (B) to be displayed on a specific page in this section, you need sidebar B to replace/merge with sidebar A.
However, you say that Sidebar B was not displayed at all if it replaced Primary Sidebar; are you certain that it did not merge with sidebar A with this setting? I ask because when 2 sidebars want to replace the same host sidebar under the same conditions, they should be merged together.

Thanks. It all makes sense now that I know a little about the underlying AND/OR logic. May I suggest that you make this a little more clear in the user interface? I think by doing this you might get away without writing a manual as the interface becomes more self-explanatory.

You are right. Sidebar A did merge with Sidebar B on the specified “Sample Page” when both Sidebar A and Sidebar B was set to replace the Primary Sidebar. Not sure how I missed that. (Maybe I forgot to add content to Sidebar B.)

To aid your inspiration to get to work on the next update of Content Aware Sidebars I just bought you a few packs of Tuborg, Carlsberg or whatever beverage you prefer. ??

Keep up the good work.