editing the sidebar

Running into a similar problem. Trying to add text and a custom image field the way other blogs do their feature section.

@tgc5308 I discovered that if you leave the theme options alone, you can indeed edit the sidebar code by diving into the footer.php —

namely, find this section in footer.php:

<!-- Right Sidebar -->
<td id="right">

	<?php // Widgetize the Right Sidebar
	if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('Right Sidebar') ) : ?>

    	<div class="widget"><div class="widget-title">
    	<h3>Recent Posts</h3></div>
<?php $r = new WP_Query(array(
	'showposts' => 20,
	'what_to_show' => 'posts',
	'nopaging' => 0,
	'post_status' => 'publish',
	'caller_get_posts' => 1));
if ($r->have_posts()) : ?>
<ul><?php  while ($r->have_posts()) : $r->the_post(); ?>
<li><a href="<?php the_permalink() ?>"><?php if ( get_the_title() ) the_title(); else the_ID(); ?></a></li>
    	<?php endwhile; ?>
    	</ul>
    	<?php wp_reset_query();  // Restore global post data stomped by the_post().
    	endif; ?>
    </div>

   ......

<!-- / Right Sidebar -->

The problem is, once you “widgetize the sidebar”, (that is.. using the dashboard to add widgets to the appearance of the right sidebar) I can find no way of editing the code. I’m gonna try tinkering some more, possibly dive into the PHP of wp-includes/widgets.php

wish me luck!