woodson02

The file name is custom.php.
* Template Name: Home

When I set the Settings/Reading to news (which it is currently set at) the widgets are being displayed – using the default page template that doesn’t display the sidebar.

news.

Let me start from the beginning. Installed twentyeleven. Created Child Theme. Took the sidebar-page.php file and saved it into my child theme. Retitled Template Name to Home page – added a widgetized area above the Primary div. Set my home page to the Home page template. Added 2 text widgets to the sidebar. In Settings/Reading set the Home page to static.

Created new page. Used default page template and called it news. Set Settings/Reading pages (news). Preview the page it has the 2 text widgets appearing underneath the posts.

I have then set Settings/Reading Pages to blank. Preview News page and I can add content to the main section. Widgets are gone. But it doesn’t display the posts.

I’m not sure if that is making any sense at all.

Ok. So Home is set to static page – which displays correctly. I set pages back to news. View it set as default template. Widgets show again. If its not selected as pages. It doesn’t show the widgets. Confusing stuff.

I wanted the static page to be the home page. So I read this article:
https://codex.www.ads-software.com/Creating_a_Static_Front_Page. It says you must also create a page to display most recent posts. So that was going to be my news page.

My brain is completely fried and my head is spinning. I wanted to make a static page so it said you had to create a new page to display your most recent posts. So that is what I did (it’s been a few weeks and I don’t even remember the steps I did.) So the “news” page was the most recent posts that is typically your default page of the twentyeleven theme. I tried every custom page template including 2 custom page templates to try and get that to just display the most recent posts and remove the sidebar. Couldn’t get it to work. Went back and deleted the custom page template. Went back and applied the default page template. Now the sidebar is gone. Only problem is it is displaying the the content from the “home” page now instead of the most recent posts.

And who knows if my custom page template was actually working or not because I’m such an idiot I was saving the changes but not publishing it. So I was viewing the page the same way as before even though changes were made. Now I have to try and figure out how to get the most recent posts back to the page lol. Thanks for all your help.

Custom Page Template – Sorry I’m not very good with the terminology yet. This is my first wordpress site. I’m used to html/css

I’m sorry I didn’t explain that good enough when I said a created my custom theme what I meant to say is a created my child theme. So yes, the twentyeleven theme is still completely in tack and any changes that have been made where made to the child theme.

I created one custom template for the home page that also adds a widgetized area above the content which worked perfect.

I then tried to create a second custom theme where I deleted the <?php get_sidebar();?> but somehow the widgets are still being called.

Sorry – I was reading on my phone – didn’t even see the link. Thank you very much.

Thanks for the reply. I am not great with php and this is my first time using wordpress. I’ve been doing a bunch of reading and trying to learn from videos on vtc but obviously I’m not catching on too quick.

From what I’m reading elsewhere maybe I should create a “static” front page?

Either way – do you have any information on how to add the actual widget area? I’ve seen a few posts about how to add an extra widget area to the sidebar but I want this to be above sidebar/content and expanding the a set width much larger?

Thanks again

Nevermind – I was putting my wordpress user name in instead of my mysql user name. I switched to root and everything worked perfectly.