What’s the best way to setup a home page with different content sections?

Mike, are you saying that I would need to register the widgets separately because the sidebar is already registered?

Opps, I wrote this out incorrectly, you will need to register the lists as “Sidebars” – not “Widgets”… sometimes all this WordPress jargon can get confusing 🙂

Here’s a working Page Template that should allow you to create dynamically editable areas on your home page. You will need to copy this code, paste it into a new file and save as t-homepage.php. Upload this file to your site’s current theme directory.

You can then create a new page in the WordPress Administration Panels and set it’s Page Template to “Frontpage”.

The template below will generate a WordPress loop width 2 widgetized regions below it.

Hope this Helps,
Mike

<?php
/*
Template Name: Frontpage
Author: Michael Fields
License: GPL 2
*/

/* Register widgetized area with WordPress */
register_sidebar( array(
	'name' => __( 'Homepage 1', $platypus->locale ),
	'id' => __( 'homepage_1' )
	) );
register_sidebar( array(
	'name' => __( 'Homepage 2', $platypus->locale ),
	'id' => __( 'homepage_2' )
	) );

/* Helper function which prints a single widgetized area. */
function mf_custom_sidebar( $id ) {
	print "\n\n" . '<div id="' . $id . '">';
	print "\n\t" . '<ul>';
	dynamic_sidebar( $id );
	print "\n\t" . '</ul>';
	print "\n\t" . '</div>';
}

get_header();

print '<div id="content">';

/* WordPress Loop Condensed. */
if ( have_posts() ) {
	while ( have_posts() ) {
		the_post();
		the_title( '<h1>', '</h1>' );
		the_content();
		comments_template();
	}
	print '<div class="clear"></div>';
}

/* Create as many Widgetized Areas Here. */
mf_custom_sidebar( 'homepage_1' );
mf_custom_sidebar( 'homepage_2' );

print '</div>';

get_sidebar();
get_footer();

?>