wen.wainwright

Ok! I was definitely not envisioning the whole sidebars/templates/hierarchy thing like that. I want two headers, one for the “blog” pages and another for the “portfolio” pages. I need to either make this happen soon or just have two sites, one as a sub-domain. In the meantime everything I’ve ever known seems to have fallen out of my head. I’ll go look at those get_sidebar() calls again and see if I can break it in a way that shows the connection ??

I am trying to make one twenty thirteen site be sort of like two sites, half portfolio, and half blog. I plan to make a custom page for the blog and use the default page for the rest of the site and set that “blog” to show the posts, etc. However I want the header of the blog page/posts to be different than the header above the portfolio pages. It sounds like you figured out how to do this? If you have can you explain it again? I’m not sure that you are doing exactly what I want to do.

O.K. Your setup still sounds confusing but if you look at this site: StrongerwithJenG – the solution might be what you are looking for.

So “Getting Started!” is a page and set to be the static home page.

“Inspiration” is a category and shows the most recent posts in the that category like the loop does.

“Recipes” is also a category but in the menu all the sub items in the drop down menu are pages. Same with the category “Workouts.”

“Tips” is a page with sub pages.

I can’t say that is necessarily the best solution but it was the one she felt most comfortable with and she is happy with how it looked. She has the menu created under Appearances -> menus.

It’s ok, I use 2012 still.

I just looked at your site and I’m not sure you are still having issues with the gray lines since they look fine to me. If you are having issues maybe reexplain them, if you have already fixed it then great! If everything is fixed you should mark this post as resolved ??

I am using a child theme. The <?php get_sidebar(); ?> is only located between the end of “content” and the get_footer. That refers to the main sidebar which is just above the footer. If I delete that it will get rid of the sidebar above the footer that I do want. There is an optional right hand sidebar that only displays if you put content in it. I have content in it so it displays the sidebar on all posts and pages. Since the only get_sidebar I can find on the various files is located after the content area I assume that get_sidebar refers to the sidebar above the footer and not to the optional right hand sidebar. I’ve looked through the different page templates and can’t find a call for the optional if being used right hand sidebar.

That last sentence above should not be a link. The link is from where I found that code before that last sentence.

This is where I am now…(have I mentioned I don’t actually know any php?):

/**
968	 * Whether a sidebar is in use.
969	 *
970	 * @since 2.8
971	 *
972	 * @param mixed $index Sidebar name, id or number to check.
973	 * @return bool true if the sidebar is in use, false otherwise.
974	 */
975	function is_active_sidebar( $index ) {
976	        $index = ( is_int($index) ) ? "sidebar-$index" : sanitize_title($index);
977	        $sidebars_widgets = wp_get_sidebars_widgets();
978	        $is_active_sidebar = ! empty( $sidebars_widgets[$index] );
979	        return $is_active_sidebar;
980	}

can I exclude it from a custom template page even though it IS active elsewhere?

I moved that snippet of code above (prior post) to before the loop which also doesn’t break it or work.

I’ve put this into a custom page template.php file just before
</div><!-- .entry-content -->

<div class="sidebar-2">
<?php
if( is_portfolio-page.php();
$exclude = array("sidebar-2");
?>
</div>

It hasn’t broken the site which is good…but it isn’t working either. So I still need help!

This is what I have (which isn’t working because of a parse syntax error on line 27 (there aren’t that many lines) which really isn’t working because I’m sure it’s probably wrong:

<?php
function twentytwelve_widgets_init() {
register_sidebar( array(
		'name' => __( 'sidebar-header1', 'twentytwelve' ),
		'id' => 'sidebar-header1',
		'description' => __( 'Adds a new widget area to the header', 'twentytwelve' ),
		'before_widget' => '<div id="sidebar-header1" class="sidebar-header1">',
		'after_widget' => '</div>',
		'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
		'after_title' => '</h3>',
	) );
}
elseif ( is_page_template( 'portfolio-page.php') ) {
	unregister_sidebar( array(
		'name'          => __( 'Secondary Widget Area', 'twentythirteen' ),
		'id'            => 'sidebar-2',
		'description'   => __( 'Appears on posts and pages in the sidebar.', 'twentythirteen' ),
		'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
		'after_widget'  => '</aside>',
		'before_title'  => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
		'after_title'   => '</h3>',
	) );
}
add_action( 'widgets_init', 'twentytwelve_widgets_init' );

I do want to keep the footer sidebar that is called here:

</div><!-- #primary -->

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
<?php get_footer(); ?>

I just don’t want the optional right hand sidebar.

I can help you change the sizes of the fonts with CSS but either certain sections would always have giant fonts…or you could do a page like this (which is awkward and clunky…):

Newsletter:

View here in small font.
View here in medium font.
View here in large font.

And have all three of those link to the post/page that it matches.

I can’t tell which theme you are using, so it’s hard to know your CSS styles. I know that Twenty Thirteen uses really enormous fonts and it has an optional right hand sidebar which I don’t think they show when you preview it.

Hmmm. Maybe I just need three templates? One can be the default, one can be for the sidebar free pages and the third for the pages that will have the sidebar…?

I’m updating my question. So in TwentyThirteen the right hand sidebar will only show if you are using it. And on some pages I do not want to use it. I looked at the conditional tags information. Now my questions is: should I (or what is the best method) find a way to exclude the sidebar from all the pages I want it excluded from or should I add it to all of the pages I want it on? Part of the problem is that I do want the sidebar on some pages (like “about”) but I can turn those pages into single post pages, right? Then I just don’t want the sidebar on the rest of the pages. I do want the sidebar on all the pages displaying posts.

Just remember to not copy the functions.php file. It will break it all.