Melpomene

Many thanks

I’ve registered you and given you the protocol requested

Just to clarify a bad typo that would otherwise alter the context. This should have read:

I’ve got another domain called faraway-fairways.com which hasn’t been the subject of the update, and the drag and drop facility works on that

Many thanks WPMU, you’re clearly trying to help-me-out here, but I fear you could be compromised by my limitations of understanding

The domain is called affordablefairways.com

I’ve included a link for you to see how the sidebars operate but I’m not sure it’ll be any good to you is it?

https://www.affordablefairways.com/our-tours/west-coast-fife-tayside-st-andrews-carnoustie/

It’s running a theme called ‘Guesthouse’ by a company called AIT. I appear to be running 2.40, albeit 2.42 is the most recent, but its far from clear just how you’re supposed to update this theme. I don’t think this can be the issue however as this problem only developed with the WordPress update to 3.8. I’ve got another domain called faraway-fairways.com which has beent he subject of the update, and the drag and drop facility works on that

Plugins being run on it include

All in One SEO, Contact form 7, Wordfence, Easy2MapWordpress, Customsidebars, WP super cache, WordPress SEO, and WordPress Importer

I put the debug code in as follows

(Appearance( – (Editor) – (Templates on the right hand side) – selected (config PHP) and simply pasted it in below as the bottom line. This brought up something about a ‘unrecognised’ and ‘foreign’ I seem to recall. I do remember a mini dinosaur appearing though and telling the earth had ended (or words to that affect)

The problem(s) I have is that I have to follow instructions literally and haven’t really got a clue what tasks I’m performing in these kinds of things but some very basic and general idea

Switching theme and decativating the plug-ins made no differecne. I can move a widget from the ianctive area, but that’s all

Putting that PHP just crashed everything, and firghtened me to death.

Having said that, the AIT ‘Guesthouse’ theme is on the verge of getting the boot as I’ve never particularly liked it, nor do I think the level of support is that good either

The temporary solution that would seem to work is to build a new side bar completely (hardly ideal) as new widgets can go in but are entered sequentially. Once a widget is in it becomes static within the sidebar, so I’ll need to enter them in the order I want them to display. Once I’ve done that, I can then delete the old ones

I’m thinking that perhaps a bottom menu bar (which the theme does support apparently) might be capable of performing the task of the side bar, but as things stand it doesn’t really seem to have resolved the issue of this empty side bar default appearing in the Woo pages

After deactivating it, the main site (theme) left an empty side bar in place as a default, that went to full width when the page attribute was altered accordingly

The Woo pages it made no difference to because the page attribute setting box doesn’t appear on the right hand side in the editor

Even the shop page, which is the one that does offer me the option of setting it at full width, isn’t responding to the instruction to do so

If I turned off the side bar plug in? would that ultimately mean that the sidebars are lost though? If I turn it off do I lose all the code and the widgets? I seem to think that’s happened before to me?

Without this navigation a customer couldn’t get to the Woo sections anyway to place an order, unless I can find another way of navigating them on what would be the mother of bottom menu bars!!!

I’m trying to think this through using my extremely limited understanding of these things.

We’re reasonably confident that the offending ‘thing’ is the plug in ‘custom sidebars’?

This is quite an integral part of the main website though and one I’d be reluctant to lose at this stage

For this plug in to work, it must have generated some function PHP somewhere when it was introduced, and then things like colour and font have been altered using CSS

The question I suppose is where would I go looking for this plug ins PHP? I didn’t spot it in the PHP theme file, the only side bar references in their were to the themes own (AIT) which don’t work, but would the plug in have replaced these for functioning purposes?

I’ve found this bit related to the plug in which I have to say means nothing to me,

“These replacements will be applied to every entry post that matches a certain post type or category.

The sidebars by categories work in a hierarchycal way, if a post belongs to a parent and a child category it will show the child category sidebars if they are defined, otherwise it will show the parent ones. If no category sidebar for post are defined, the post will show the post post-type sidebar. If none of those sidebars are defined, the theme default sidebar is shown.”

I can’t spot any evidence of the plug in in the functions PHP file.

Let me try and explain a bit and see if it helps (i might accidentally throw light on something significant)

I’ve had to use a plug-in called ‘custom sidebars’ by Javier Marquez, due to limitations of a theme that I haven’t been particularly impressed with. This worked anyway, and I was able to set indvidual pages with discretion, at either template (sidebars) or full width, as normal in the WP page attribute. Critically I had the capacity to mix and match my pages to display a sidebar or otherwise, and this is the capacity I seem to have lost for the Woo pages

When I brought the Woo commerce plug into the site everything went reasonably smoothly with the exception of this display issue. Only the Shop page offers me the page attribute setting though through WP, it simply doesn’t appear as an option for the product pages which is where the damage is being done (I think)

Even though the shop page is set at full-width, its displaying the default though with an unpopulated side bar

Bear with me, I’ll see if I can find it.

It did seem strange that Woo would put something like a sidebar in without an easy way of removing it.

I’m assuming it’s come with the plug-in then (which also seems to have disabled the visual editor too)

Ok I tried it, but it hasn’t worked.

Hasn’t crashed anything either, so that’s a relief

I should clarify,

you’ve specified ‘theme function’ so I’m not to put it in the woo.commerce PHP file? OK that bit I understand, but I was always under the impression you couldn’t go round putting PHP in anywhere in a theme a file, and that it had to put in an appropriate location? is that right? or can I just put it anywhere like I might customised CSS?

Thankyou, something tells me this might do the trick, but before I do, (and at great risk of inviting a very easy one-liner!!) is there any specific space I need to put it?

Terrified as I am to perform anything that involves PHP, I did have a tentative dig in the PHP template file called main.woocommerce and found this little item, which my extremely limited understanding of such issues would lead me to conclude that some default sidebar has indeed been coded into the plug-in

<!– SIDEBAR –>
<div class=”sidebar”>

{dynamicSidebar “shop-sidebar”}

</div><!– end of sidebar –>

Now I want sidebars to appear elsewhere in the site and have had to use a plug-in to support this due to limitations in the theme, but I don’t want them on the Woo pages

I guess there’s two questions really:

1: Is this PHP the offender that’s causing a side bar to display?
2: How do I disable it safely?

I’m sure there’s something you can do involving /* or */ isn’t there? If that’s right? where abouts would you wrap it round the PHP?

It feels as if it should be something that straight-forward Kramarz, but I think as you’ve worked out, it might not be.

The shop page is one that can be set at full width using the normal page attribute, but doing this seems to make no difference to the display. The option to set the product pages at full width doesn’t exist with no page attribute box showing in order to make that setting. Even if there were, you suspect it wouldn’t work aka the shop page

There are a few widgets that have come in from the plug in, but I’m not sure what they are or what they can do

It looks pretty ugly as things stand though