Jeremy Pry

Kevin,

To state the obvious, it appears that no sidebar content at all is being filled in. Can you paste two sections of code in here so we can see what’s going on:

1. The section in either index.php or page.php where get_sidebar() is called
2. The code from either sidebar.php or sidebar-custom.php (whatever your custom name is)

Currently, you have an empty div with class “sidebar_about” enclosing another enpty div with class “sidebar_pad”

Kevin, just to be clear on what you are looking for, are you trying to have a unique widget on one page only, or are you trying to have custom sidebar content that does not come from a widget?

You have the right idea, but not quite the right way to go about it. You would want to use something like this:

<?php
if(!is_page(30)) :
get_sidebar();
endif; ?>

The exclamation point is code for “not”, so you’re telling WordPress, “If this is not the page I specify, then display the sidebar. Otherwise, skip the sidebar.”

See the is_page() page for more specifics about the is_page() function.

In addition to what @esmi said, you would specify a different sidebar in a slightly different way than your main sidebar. Let’s say you have two sidebars in your theme: sidebar.php and sidebar-gallery_sidebar.php. To call the main sidebar, you use your normal get_sidebar(); function. But to call your gallery sidebar, it would be called by get_sidebar('gallery_sidebar');. The sidebar function allows you to specify a specific name by passing the information to the function.

You can find the style sheet being used by your theme if you click on Themes in the Admin panel, and then click on “Editor” under that. A list of all the files in the theme will be displayed on the right, and one of those files will be the style sheet. Use the source code to figure out what page elements to reference, and then either add to an existing style definition, or create your own.

For example, your list of links are most likely coded as an unordered list, so each link is a <li> object. You can set a style that adds padding-top to add extra space, or a top/bottom border to add lines between the links.

The changes that you’re describing sound better suited to a CSS file. Are you familiar with editing Cascading Style Sheets?

Could you be a little more specific about what you mean by the “header”? Are you talking specifically about the image, or are you talking about the header DIV element itself? Also, where are you changing the height/width settings?

If you domain name is routed to your /home/web folder, then the only way to remove “wordpress” from your URL is to move the main WordPress index page. The instructions provided in the link from esmi will explain exactly what you need to do in order to accomplish that.

Where is WordPress installed on your server? Is it installed in a folder named “WordPress”?

Based on your code, it looks like there are a few syntax errors, as well as an improper mix of HTML and PHP. Try something like this:

<?php if (has_comments()) { ?>
<div id="comments-area">
<?php comments_template(); ?>
</div>
<?php } else { ?>
<div id="no-comments-area">
<?php comments_template(); ?>
</div>
<?php } ?>

@jimisaacs

Thanks for that information. Could you point me in the right direction to find resources that describe what the possible scenarios are for having the WordPress core in a different location from the index.php and .htaccess file?

@jimisaacs

Yes, that is correct.

I’ve discovered something interesting: I moved my .htaccess and index.php back to [webroot] (again, updating the WordPress general settings), and now that I’ve done that, the .htaccess file is writable by WordPress again. Is it possible that there is some type of bug with trying to write to .htaccess when it is not in a parent directory, but rather in a different child directory of the parent?

To recap:

• Index.php and .htaccess located in [webroot]/Blog, and WordPress core located in [webroot]/wp, .htaccess is “not writable”.
• Index.php and .htaccess located in [webroot], and WordPress core located in [webroot]/wp, .htaccess is writable.