How to attach sidebar to shortcode's output?

Question

I have one shortcode that should be always next to the sidebar:

// [shortcode] otuput | default sidebar 

My theme allows me to set different sidebars for each page. So I have sidebars on a few pages, but not everywhere.

What's the best/proper way of achieving this goal? I was thinking about adding dynamic_sidebar($sidebar_name) to the shortcode itself, but it doesn't seem to be smart idea (especially with multiple instances of my shortcode at the same page).

Answer 1

I'm still not sure exactly what you're trying to do, but here's one possibility if it's to display something like this:

PAGE CONTENT | SHORTCODE/POSTS LOOP | SIDEBAR

Do you have control of the shortcode content? If so, you could update it so its output is wrapped in a <div id="shortcodecontent"> --shortcode post-loop output-- </div>.

Then add a text widget to your sidebar and insert the [shortcode] within it. If shortcodes aren't rendering when inserted in widgets, add the following line to the functions.php file within your theme:

add_filter('widget_text', 'do_shortcode');

Now, the shortcode output will appear first, before any of the other widgets in your sidebar. Using CSS, style the wrapping #shortcodecontent div so that your shortcode widget floats to the left of the other widgets in your sidebar.

Hope this helps in some way! Best of luck.