radicalDesigns // ActionPress!

Wordpress Theme templates can have as many widget based sidebar’s as you have the patience to define. The default one is always in a file called sidebar.php — after that it doesn’t really matter what you call the files.  Here’s the steps for adding one:

1) Call dynamic_sidebar – create the new sidebar php file, lets call it rightsidebar.php and include this code:

<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar(1) ) : else : ?>
My right sidebar goes here, widgets you gotta use them.
<?php endif; ?>

See that number as an option in dynamic_sidebar(1)  — this is gonna be a different number for each sidebar you add and correspond to the ordering of the functions we will define in step 2.

2) Add register_sidebar - Add this code to functions.php:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
register_sidebar(array(
'name'=>'left sidebar',
'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
'after_widget' => '</li>',
'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
'after_title' => '</h2>',
));


You will have one of these for each of the times that you create a sidebar by calling dynamic_sidebar() in different php files and they will correspond in the order in which they are called to the numbers defined. So dynamic_sidebar(1) corresponds to the first register_sidebar  See the name attribute?  That’s what’s gonna appear in the widget interface. See the before and after stuff, that’s the wrapper html that it produces.

3) Include the sidebar in your template – include the sidebar file in the template like so:

<?php include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/rightsidebar.php'); ?>

That should about do it.