mwproductions

Hi alchymyth,

That was my suspicion too, but it doesn’t seem to be the case. Here’s the code from my sidebar.php file (I apologize if the formatting is goofy):

<?php
/**
 * The Sidebar containing the primary and secondary widget areas.
 *
 * @package WordPress
 * @subpackage openeye
 * @since OpenEye 1.0
 */
?>

		<div id="primary" class="widget-area round shadow" role="complementary">
			<ul>

<?php
	/* When we call the dynamic_sidebar() function, it'll spit out
	 * the widgets for that widget area. If it instead returns false,
	 * then the sidebar simply doesn't exist, so we'll hard-code in
	 * some default sidebar stuff just in case.
	 */
	if ( is_active_sidebar( 'primary-widget-area' ) ) : ?>

		<div id="primary-title" class="widget-area" role="complementary">
			<ul>
				<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'primary-widget-area' ); ?>
			</ul>
		</div>
		<?php endif; // end primary widget area ?>
			</ul>
		</div>

<?php
	// A second sidebar for widgets, just because.
	if ( is_active_sidebar( 'secondary-widget-area' ) ) : ?>

		<div id="secondary" class="widget-area round shadow" role="complementary">
			<ul>
				<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'secondary-widget-area' ); ?>
			</ul>
		</div>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php
	// A third sidebar for widgets, just because.
	if ( is_active_sidebar( 'tertiary-widget-area' ) ) : ?>

		<div id="tertiary" class="widget-area round shadow" role="complementary">
			<ul>
				<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'tertiary-widget-area' ); ?>
			</ul>
		</div>

<?php endif; ?>

<?php
	// A fourth sidebar for widgets, just because.
	if ( is_active_sidebar( 'quaternary-widget-area' ) ) : ?>

		<div id="quaternary" class="widget-area" role="complementary">
			<ul>
				<?php dynamic_sidebar( 'quaternary-widget-area' ); ?>
			</ul>
		</div>

<?php endif; ?>

As I said before, if I edit the secondary widget in this file (for example, add an extra class to the div).

If I remove the secondary widget entirely (even just the div), the phantom widget disappears, but then if I assign a secondary widget, it won’t show up.

Well, I reverted to the Twenty Eleven theme and pretty much everything is gone. The sidebars, the content, all nowhere to be found.

Ugh. Did you even read my initial post?

One of the many plugins is called “Custom sidebars,” and it seems to completely manage the sidebars. I tried turning it off and all of the sidebars on every page disappeared completely. It could be the culprit, but at this point I’m not sure how to test further.

Yeah, I can’t figure out why it’s appearing. It only shows up in that one section, but it shows up on every page in that section.

@krishna – This is the page in question, but as I said, you won’t be able to view it because it’s behind a login.

That’s what I thought it would do.

I’m commenting on this so I can receive replies, as I’d sure like to know too.

Still stumped. Does anyone know how WordPress decides which page to load when a search is performed? Running get_search_template() on category.php returns /path/to/search.php.

I just discovered that it goes to category.php instead of search.php.