temeraire

I know what you mean deeve007. I also understand why you are confused:
Believe it or not, I had left out the line

register_sidebar();

from functions.php altogether (due to inexperience with WP of course) but my dynamic sidebar worked fine, complete with widgets and everything!

Then I added a piece of (irrelevant) code to functions.php, then deleted it again, and that’s when the dynamic sidebar stopped working, as you describe.

Very strange problem, I guess there’s some kind of bug that causes confusion in the communication between what you do through the WP admin panel and the php files…

( Can I just note again that my original problem has been solved by adding the above bit of code to the file functions.php )

OK, this is strange: This line of code solved my problem — thanks!

But this code wasn’t there to begin with, and the dynamic sidebar worked. How do you explain that?

I really appreciate the help though! Problem solved.

where did you get your ‘sidebar’ code from?
which template is showing the sidebar, and what is its full code?

I created sidebar.php to make it dynamic following instructions from WP.org. The file sidebar.php contains the following code:

<ul id="sidebar">
	<?php if ( !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
				  <li><h1>about</h1></li>
				  <li class="blogposts"><h2><?php _e('recent blog posts'); ?></h2></li>
						<ul>
							<?php wp_get_archives('type=postbypost&limit=1'); ?>
						</ul>
				  <li><h3>item 3</h3></li>
				  <li><h4>item 4</h4></li>
	<?php endif; ?>
	</ul>

Please note again that I did have a dynamic sidebar with widgets which worked, using the above code and the original functions.php
( https://github.com/viewportindustries/starkers/blob/master/functions.php )

I can’t really understand what the code I tried to use did to the whole thing…

Can you tell what went wrong?

Update:

It turns out the original file is exactly the same as mine, nothing wrong there. This is the file:

https://github.com/viewportindustries/starkers/blob/master/functions.php

So this is not resolved yet…

Indeed, this looks strange.
I did have a dynamic sidebar before with widgets and everything, which worked fine.

Maybe I have done something fundamentally wrong, such as using the wrong file or something like that, I cannot explain this otherwise.

I’ll have to go through the whole thing again, and check the files I’m using… I’ll post the outcome here when I have news on this.

Thanks alchymyth.

Thanks for having a look alchymyth.

Yes, this is the original, unedited, untouched functions.php from Starkers framework, which I have been trying to modify (the framework that is, not the file). I only pasted the extra code in and then deleted it.

Any idea what might have gone wrong?

Hi fonglh,

Thanks for the comment.
No, it was messed up when I pasted the new code in: I checked it when I pasted it, and again when I deleted it.

Also, I was very careful to remove only the code I pasted, I am 100% sure of that.

Original functions.php code:
https://pastebin.com/uttK7Afe

Hi,

First thing I would be looking for is an empty div somewhere which results in a white block on your page.

Also, I can’t find a closing div tag for the following bit in your code:
<div style="width:850px !important;">

There should be a
</div>
somewhere

Could that be (part of) the problem?