WordPress Customization

By Justin Laing
2008-01-09

Sidebars

Wordpress Sidebar Example

Most templates have one or sidebars. Sidebars usually contain navigational links, but they can also include search boxes, lists of related pages, and other widgets (like mybloglog etc.). It’s really easy to edit your sidebars. Just find the sidebar.php file and open it your editor. You’ll see the HTML that creates the side bar and puts the content within it. There are a few template functions that are helpful within the sidebar like wp_get_archives(); which will display a list of time periods that you wrote blog posts (think August (8), September (2) which are links to those months posts). Most sidebar functions are meant to be placed within <ul></ul> tags because they format their output as lists. So in your side bar you might have this code:

Sidebar Code

This code would generate two lists, one of archive months, and one of categories you have posted under.

You can find more of these functions at:
http://codex.wordpress.org/Template_Tags

Tutorial Pages:
» Introduction To WordPress
» WordPress Themes
» Structure Of A WordPress Theme
» Making Your New Theme
» Modifying The Header
» Blog / Post Templates
» The Post Loop
» Page Templates
» Sidebars
» Meta Data / Custom Fields For Page Customization

Originally posted on Makebeta

Related Tutorials:
» Creating an Online Newsletter with Drupal
» Setting Up Subversion for Development on Windows
» Stylize Your Digg Count
» Installing Apache on Windows
» Ecommerce Imagery: Persuading with Pictures
» Customizable Websites - The Definitive Guide