Adding a Sidebar
Our theme also doesn’t have a sidebar (widget area), let’s fix that now.
First, we need to register the sidebar in functions.php:
function my_custom_theme_sidebar() {register_sidebar( array( ‘name’ => __( ‘Primary Sidebar’, ‘my-custom-theme’ ), ‘id’ => ‘sidebar-1’,) );
}
add_action( ‘widgets_init’, ‘my_custom_theme_sidebar’ );
Now create sidebar.php in your theme folder and add the following code:
<?php if ( is_active_sidebar( ‘sidebar-1’ ) ) { ?><ul class=”sidebar”> <?php dynamic_sidebar(‘sidebar-1’ ); ?></ul>
<?php } ?>
Here, we use an if statement to check if the sidebar is “active” before outputting the code. An active sidebar is one that the user has added at least one widget to.
The next step is to include the sidebar in index.php by adding a get_sidebar() call above wp_footer().
