How to add a custom sidebar (Widget Area) to your WordPress Website

How to, Web Design, Web Development, WordPress

Do you have a WordPress website where each page has the same content in your sidebar? Have you ever wanted to have different content from page to page, but not sure how to do it? Well this post is for you.

Woo Themes has a really simple plugin that will allow you to create your own custom sidebars or widget areas for your website. You’ll be able to name each widget area whatever you like, and even assign it to your already created pages. See the video for a quick walk-through on installing the plugin and configuring a widget area.

Want to get a copy of this plugin to download now; follow this link to the WordPress repository and get your copy today. Oh and be sure to give a shout out to the guys at Woo Themes for making our lives easier!

How To: Add A Menu To Your WordPress Theme

All Posts, How to, Web Development, WordPress

Have you ever installed a new WordPress theme that didn’t have native support for creating and selecting custom menu (navigation bar). Now before you jump in be sure to either do a backup of your files, or as you get to the Functions.php and Header.php files copy the original code to a text editor before you modify it. Once you’ve done these preventative “CYA” measures follow these steps below:

From your Dashboard menu, go to Appearance > Edit and add the code below to the theme’s functions.php file: (in some cases I’ve seen this called “Theme Options” just above where it says “functions.php”. This is the same thing.)

You can add this code below towards the bottom of your page code so that you can easily find it later should you need to reference it.

add_theme_support( ‘menus’ );

(you may need to add this on the next line if you get to the end and your menu doesn’t show up:

add_action( ‘init’, ‘register_my_menus’ );

function register_my_menus() {
register_nav_menus(
array(
‘menu-1’ => __( ‘Menu 1’ ),
)
);
}

User your browser’s Find feature and search for this code in your theme’s Header.php file:

<?php wp_list_pages(‘title_li=&depth=1’); ?>

Highlight this string of code and replace it with this code below:

<?php wp_nav_menu( array( ‘sort_column’ => ‘menu_order’, ‘container_class’ => ‘menu-header’ ) ); ?>

Lastly click on Appearance then Menus and you should be able to create a custom menu.