j.biddy

So after a lot of searching through the WP Codex here is the solution I was able to come up with.

My first step was to log into my web server via FTP and download the template file I was using, in my case sidebar-page.php. Then I opened the file in a text editor (Bluefish) and changed the first part from this:

<?php
/**
* Template Name: Sidebar Template
* Description: A Page Template that adds a sidebar to pages
*
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage Twenty_Eleven
* @since Twenty Eleven 1.0
*/

get_header(); ?>

To this:

<?php
/**
* Template Name: Sidebar Test Template
* Description: A Page Template that adds a sidebar to pages
*
* @package WordPress
* @subpackage Twenty_Eleven
* @since Twenty Eleven 1.0
*/

if ( is_page(‘whatever_page_you_want’)) :
get_header( ‘whatever_page_you_want’ );
else :
get_header();
endif;
?>

whatever_page_you_want can be a page id eg 158, it can be an about page eg about.php. The next step is to create the header file that you want the get_header(); function to call. So, create the file header-whatever_page_you_want.php. Alter the layout of the header as you desire and upload the files to your child directory. To add more pages to have separate headers for:

if ( is_page(‘whatever_page_you_want’)) :
get_header( ‘whatever_page_you_want’ );
elseif ( is_404() ) :
get_header( ‘404’ );
else :
get_header();
endif;
?>

This worked for me and hopefully is considered best practices.

@esmi I am operating a child theme, thanks for the reminder though. Us WP noobs have to be reminded about the child theme, super important!

Thanks again, everyone.

@s3mw I had considered just hard coding it into the header.php page as you suggest but thought I would ask first as that didn’t seem like preferred WP practice on first consideration.

Thanks for the info, all.