Title: register_sidebar function makes everything disappear
Last modified: August 20, 2016

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# register_sidebar function makes everything disappear

 *  Resolved [Matthew Hutson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mhutson/)
 * (@mhutson)
 * [14 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/register_sidebar-function-makes-everything-disappear/)
 * Hi,
 * I’m trying to make the sidebar for my non-blog pages different from the sidebar
   for my blog page.
 * I created a child of the twentyeleven theme, which works fine. I also created
   a new functions.php file in the child theme folder that just contains
 *     ```
       <?php
       ?>
       ```
   
 * and things work fine.
 * Then I followed the instructions here:
    [http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_Your_Sidebar](http://codex.wordpress.org/Customizing_Your_Sidebar)
   and added the following code between the open and close tags in the new php file:
 *     ```
       <?php if ( function_exists ('register_sidebar')) {
           register_sidebar ('custom');
       } ?>
       ```
   
 * But now all of the pages on my site, and even all of the WordPress admin pages,
   come up completely blank.
 * (I tried duplicating the sidebar.php document from the twentyeleven folder, labelling
   it sidebar-custom.php, and putting it in the twentyeleven-child folder, but that
   makes no difference. Also, this new sidebar never showed up on the Widgets page.)
 * Did I do something wrong?
 * P.S. I noticed that the link above tells me that “In wp-includes/widgets.php 
   you find the function-definition for register-sidebars()” but I don’t see a folder
   named “wp-includes” or any files named “widgets.php”.
 * P.P.S. I noticed so inconsistency in the codex about references to “register_sidebar”
   and “register_sidebars”. I tried both unsuccessfully.
 * Thanks,
    Matt

The topic ‘register_sidebar function makes everything disappear’ is closed to new
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 * 0 replies
 * 1 participant
 * Last reply from: [Matthew Hutson](https://wordpress.org/support/users/mhutson/)
 * Last activity: [14 years, 5 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/register_sidebar-function-makes-everything-disappear/)
 * Status: resolved

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