how to remove sidebar from blog pages

Assuming your client’s site is using a static front page, the main posts page will use the current theme’s index.php template file automatically – irrespective of what page template you try to apply via Edit Page.

thank you for your reply. I’m assuming that there should be a way, using conditionals to show the sidebar if some conditions are met and hide it otherwise. I would like to be able to show the sidebar ideally only on two pages but it can show up on all of the pages. but on the blog pages, for esthetic reasons, I would like it remove so that listings flow.

which I understand doesn’t apply to pages

Not strictly true. See this Codex entry.

how do you remove that meta info from the blogs

Assuming by “blogs”, you mean Posts. you will need to edit the relevant template files in the theme and remove the references to date and, if necessary, categories & tags. So that’s index.php, single.php, archive.php, category.php and tag.php (although your theme may not have all of those template files).

At a slight tangent, what ecommerce plugin are you using?

we’re not using ecommerce, which makes it even dicier. products are listed just for specification. though they’re for sale, they’re not sold on the website. I have looked at a few plugins, but none will allow to display images along the product listings. at a pinch I thought I could use an image gallery but the text that goes with the images is 3 to 5 paragraphs long.

I’m biased as I help to develop & support it but have you had a look at https://www.ads-software.com/extend/plugins/eshop/ It just uses the WP core featured image functionality to place product images on Pages or Posts. It also has some product listing shortcodes that would allow you to list sub-Page products complete with an automated “read more” type link. and you can handle orders offline/manually using a the Cash/Bank pseudo gateways if needed.

that’s the one that I first started looking at but it dumped menu items that I didn’t need. too much complication. client sells ‘green’ servers. so the listings are just for his clients to read up on the specs of the machines. that’s all. he doesn’t have thousands of them, just a bunch. I modified the files that you referenced. the meta data is gone. that’s at least one issue off the list. thank you. next is to make the sidebar go away from the posts page.