Adding New Widget Areas in Thesis

• Tweet

Just when you though that you had enough of Thesis stuff… here’s some more. I get about 10 emails a day relating to help on blogs and at least half relate to Thesis, despite the fact that it’s very much a minority framework. The disproportionately large number of emails regarding Thesis is a good indication of the complexity of the framework.

I believe that the number of bloggers and affiliates that promote Thesis is more about the commissions rather than the appropriateness of the framework for your average user. For this reason you’ll very rarely see me promote Thesis unless I’m targeting advanced users. Although it’s a framework that will work for beginners (and it is worth learning), it’s far more suited to accomplished or advanced coders.

One enhancement that may make Thesis more workable for your average user – particularly if you’re building a site for somebody that doesn’t share your coding literacy – is more Widget areas. Using hooks, and even Open Hook, is certainly the most effecient means of accomplishing customisation so users can easily add content. When you’re building for a client it is nice if you can build in a few extra widget areas that they can easily manage or modify without worrying about any form of code.

Widget area as it will appear in your control panel

This code will add a widget area after the header (a hook at thesis_hook_after_header) although you can add a hook anywhere the framework permits. Keep in mind that a larger number of widgets will compromise the speed of your site.

Navigate your way to wp-content/themes/thesis/custom and open up custom_functions.php for editing. Add these lines at the end of the page and save.

<?php
add_action('thesis_hook_after_header', 'after_header');
function after_header() {
?>

<?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('after_header') ){ ?>
<?php } ?>


<?php
}
?>

<?php
register_sidebar(array('name'=>'after_header', 'before_title'=>'
', 'after_title'=>'

'));
?>

Now log into your control panel and you’ll find a brand new widget.

If you liked this article, you may also like:

1. Thesis and the Facebook Like Plugin
2. Thesis and Yet Another Featured Posts Plugin (YAFPP)
3. Add shortcode into a WordPress sidebar
4. Exclude posts from WordPress blog or RSS feed based on a tag
5. WordPress Post Missed Schedule