Title: Widgetising A Theme
Last modified: August 18, 2016

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# Widgetising A Theme

 *  Resolved [coolkarthik88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/coolkarthik88/)
 * (@coolkarthik88)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/)
 * hey guys i want my theme to support widgets but i have three block which i want
   to widgetise and i want all of them to have differant names..
 * i read the tutorial at automattic but didn’t quite understand it.. can you please
   help me..
 * to see the theme i am talking about please visit
    [http://www.33rockers.com/2006/07/04/fauxed/](http://www.33rockers.com/2006/07/04/fauxed/)
 * thank you..

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

 *  [whooami](https://wordpress.org/support/users/whooami/)
 * (@whooami)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414080)
 * link doesnt work, connection refused.
 *  Thread Starter [coolkarthik88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/coolkarthik88/)
 * (@coolkarthik88)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414082)
 * my hosting seems to be down i guess
 *  Thread Starter [coolkarthik88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/coolkarthik88/)
 * (@coolkarthik88)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414142)
 * my hosting is back..
 *  Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * (@otto42)
 * WordPress.org Admin
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414235)
 * > hey guys i want my theme to support widgets but i have three block which i 
   > want to widgetise and i want all of them to have differant names..
   > i read the tutorial at automattic but didn’t quite understand it.. can you 
   > please help me..
 * Sure. It’s easy. First you have to understand what a widget is. Basically, a 
   widget is a block of some HTML that will be inserted into the page somewhere.
   Several of them will be inserted in some order. So you can define html to go 
   before and after the widgets, as well as around the title of them. What I’m getting
   at is that a widget on the page looks like this:
 * before_widget
    before_title Title after_title widget content after_widget
 * As a theme designer, you have to determine what the before’s and after’s are.
   They may be LI and H2 tags or they may be DIVs or could be anything you like,
   really.
 * Once you’ve worked that out, you need to create a functions.php and add this 
   to it:
    ` if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) { register_sidebar(array('
   before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">', 'after_widget' => '</
   li>', 'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">', 'after_title' => '</h2>','
   name' => 'Sidebar Name 1' )); register_sidebar(array(... register_sidebar(array(...}
 * This basically creates your three sidebars (widget spaces). Having this in your
   functions.php file will do several things, but the main noticable one is that
   it will make the widgets config page have the three spaces for you to drag and
   drop widgets into. The “name” parameter you use on each one will be the names
   shown for these three spaces.
 * You might be asing what the %1$s and %2$s and such are all about. Each widget
   may have styling that it wants to use for itself, and this allows the widget 
   to specify its own classes and id’s. %1$s is for the ID, %2$s is for the class.
   I highly recommend leaving those bits inside the before_widget, even if you do
   change it to a DIV or something else. In fact, if you’re satisfied with LI’s 
   and H2’s (you really should design your sidebars to this semi-standard approach,
   it makes things simpler in the long run), then you can use this simpler register
   line instead of the complex one above:
    `register_sidebar(array('name' => 'Sidebar
   Name 1'));`
 * Then, in your theme itself, you need to provide someplace where these sidebars
   will actually be displayed. And that is as trivial as it can possibly be:
    `<?
   php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')) { dynamic_sidebar('Sidebar Name 
   1');  } ?>
 * That will display all the widgets in the “Sidebar Name 1” sidebar space that 
   you created in functions.php. It will automatically add the tags you specified
   around the necessary elements. You may need to do some other formatting, like
   adding UL’s around it or something, but that’s basically all there is to it.
 *  Thread Starter [coolkarthik88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/coolkarthik88/)
 * (@coolkarthik88)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414263)
 * hey thanks for the help
 *  Thread Starter [coolkarthik88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/coolkarthik88/)
 * (@coolkarthik88)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414266)
 * i tried it out and my blog homepage shows the following..
    ` # if ( function_exists('
   register_sidebar') ) { register_sidebar(array( 'before_widget' => '', 'after_widget'
   => ' ', 'before_title' => ' ', 'after_title' => ' # ', 'name' => 'Bottom_left'));
   register_sidebar(array( 'before_widget' => '', 'after_widget' => ' ', 'before_title'
   => ' ', 'after_title' => ' # ', 'name' => 'Bottom_middle' )); register_sidebar(
   array( 'before_widget' => '', 'after_widget' => ' ', 'before_title' => ' ', '
   after_title' => ' # ', 'name' => 'Bottom_right' )); register_sidebar(array( '
   before_widget' => '', 'after_widget' => ' ', 'name' => 'top_side' )); } Warning:
   Cannot modify header information - headers already sent by (output started at
   C:Program Filesxampphtdocswordpresswp-contentthemesfauxedfunctions.php:13) in
   C:Program Filesxampphtdocswordpresswp-login.php on line 9 <code> know what is
   wrong
 *  Moderator [Samuel Wood (Otto)](https://wordpress.org/support/users/otto42/)
 * (@otto42)
 * WordPress.org Admin
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414289)
 * You screwed up the PHP somewhere. Is your PHP code inside of <?php … ?> tags?
 *  Thread Starter [coolkarthik88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/coolkarthik88/)
 * (@coolkarthik88)
 * [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414314)
 * hey i have corrected that bug but the widgets don’t show up.. see my related 
   post : [http://wordpress.org/support/topic/78598](http://wordpress.org/support/topic/78598)

Viewing 8 replies - 1 through 8 (of 8 total)

The topic ‘Widgetising A Theme’ is closed to new replies.

## Tags

 * [widgets](https://wordpress.org/support/topic-tag/widgets/)

 * 8 replies
 * 3 participants
 * Last reply from: [coolkarthik88](https://wordpress.org/support/users/coolkarthik88/)
 * Last activity: [19 years, 11 months ago](https://wordpress.org/support/topic/widgetising-a-theme/#post-414314)
 * Status: resolved

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