Modifying search.php

In my WordPress implementation, I have two sets of widgets, one of which is a custom menu. I use the basic WordPress parameters to include one widget on some of the pages and other widgets on other pages.

Specifically, this is a website for an art gallery, and a custom menu that contains the names of the artists appears as a widget on most pages. Some other pages do not include the artist menu, but instead include text widgets with news items. The post page has a sidebar with recent posts, categories, etc.

When I include a search function, the results are shown with a sidebar that has the custom menu of artists. I would like search results to instead show widgets for recent posts, categories, etc.

I do not know PHP, but it seems that in search.php, the line

<?php get_sidebar(‘top’); ?>

is the one that gets the sidebar and that I could eliminate the sidebar altogether by deleting the line.

My question is what changes do I make to search.php to get the search results to display the set of widgets that appear on the post pages?

Thanks….Duane