[Resolved] How to edit sidebars?

[Ole Grosen]

Playing around with the theme here.
As you see I want containers for content in the center and a left sidebar and a right sidebar.
Some of the widget areas are identical in the two sidebars – I have two search forms for example.
How do I edit each sidebar to my liking i.e. I want to delete the “duplicates,” delete some others and add new ones. How do I do that?
Regards
OG

[Ole Grosen]

PS: Some of the content in the sidebar widgets is in English and some in Danish. I would prefer one language all over.

[Tom]

Hi there,

You can edit what’s in the sidebars by using Widgets: http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/

Not sure how some of it would be in Danish as we don’t have that translation (although I would love to have it translated into Danish).

However, when you add your own widgets, that default message will go away.

Let me know if you have any more questions,
Tom

[Ole Grosen]

Thanks, I’ll try that.
Some of the Danish is there because I just chose a one-click installation of WordPress af the web hotel, which is translated to Danish, though the hotel itself is an international brand.

[Ole Grosen]

Did not work.
The current widgets in the left sidebar does not show up in WordPress dashboard. But I can remove the three widgets by placing a calendar instead, and the three former widgets are gone. Problem: I don’t want a calendar. So I delete this new calendar hoping it will result in a blank left sidebar, but then the three former widgets show up again.
Are the two dashboards from WordPress and GeneratePress ruling each other out in some mysterious way?

[Tom]

There are no two Dashboards – GeneratePress is just a theme that adds on to the WordPress Dashboard. GP doesn’t do anything custom when it comes to the addition of widgets, that’s all WordPress.

So you go into “Appearance > Widgets” and open the Left Sidebar widget area, and remove everything, but that doesn’t work?

If not, you can send me your URL, username and password to support@generatepress.com and I can try to find the issue.

Thanks,
Tom

[Ole Grosen]

I know that there only is the WordPress dashboard, but GeneratePress adds more controls within it.
Yes, I did what you wrote in paragraph no. 2 – I could not remove the widgets as they did not show up.
I’ve experimented a little and came up with this work-around: I made a new user-defined menu in the left sidebar, which deleted/overwrote the three widgets, and as I didn’t define the menu – it did not show up itself. I don’t know if it works invisibly in the background making problems at a later stage, but for now it looks okay. The widgets are gone and I can’t see the undefined menu.
There is a link with the URL in my first post.

[Tom]

Did the widget you wanted to remove contain text telling you how to add widgets to the area or turn the are off? If so, that’s a default message shown when you have a sidebar enabled with no widget inside of it.

That message is turned off when you add a widget to that area.

If you don’t want to add a widget to that area, you can turn the left sidebar off completely inside “Appearance > Customizer > Layout”.

Let me know if this clears things up 🙂
Tom

[Ole Grosen]

The only texts within the widgets in the left sidebar was “archive” “search” and so on.
I’m not interested in turning this sidebar off. I just want to control the content of my site and only have the elements I choose to have.
I will work on this the next couple of days, trying to put some plug-ins in the left sidebar, cross my fingers, and keep you informed.

[Tom]

Very weird – those widgets should be removable completely as WordPress adds them to the primary sidebar on activation.

Definitely keep me informed – I’m here if you need any help 🙂

Tom

[Ole Grosen]

All widgets in both sidebars were present from the get-go. I didn’t add them, strange yeah.

[Solutions]

Hi There,

I am having the same issue as Ole Grosen has outlined in his posts last month.

I have the Disable Elements add-on but that doesn’t achieve the desired outcome.

It seems I am unable to ‘turn off’ the side bar widgets. I can only do this by changing the layout and not having a sidebar however this means my secondary navigation disappears as well (as I would like the secondary navigation to be in the side bar).

Perhaps I am missing something but would be most grateful if there is any advice you could please provide on this.

Many thanks in advance.

[Tom]

I would use a plugin like this: https://wordpress.org/plugins/display-widgets/

It allows you to turn off widgets on certain pages.

[Solutions]

Thanks so much for your reply and thank you for the link to the plugin.

Unfortunately this isn’t working for me because the widgets haven’t been selected for use in the sidebar in the first place, that is, I never dragged them in and so technically, they shouldn’t be active.

It is as though they are there by default whenever I turn on the sidebar.

The widgets that appear are “SEARCH”, “ARCHIVES”, “META”. I haven’t selected any of these to appear in the sidebar but they show up anyway, even with this plugin. The plugin is very useful though.

I have tried dragging the widgets into the sidebar and turning them off using the checkboxes but this does not work either.

Most grateful if you might have another solution.

Many thanks!

[Tom]

Ha – I fixed this bug with the primary navigation, but must have overlooked it for the secondary navigation.

You can “hack” it by adding an empty widget to the sidebar, which will remove the default widgets.

I’ll fix this issue and release an update.

Thanks!

[Author]

Posts