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I am developing a refresh of my site on a new VPS plan and on of the main changes is switching from the dreaded wp e-commerce to WooCommerce.

The URL to the WooCommerce store page is http://95.142.166.209/shop/ [I am accessing the site via the VPS IP address for now as my domain is being used for the live site - StackExchange doesn't allow IP URLs so you'll need to copy-paste the IP to your address bar (sorry)]

I am still in the process of styling and templates but I can't seem to figure out the sidebar. My WordPress theme has 2 sidebars defined in its functions.php: blog sidebar and shop sidebar. For some reason the only sidebar I can get to show on the store page is the blog sidebar which is only meant to show (surprisingly) on the blog.

I tried creating a template for the store and inserted the get_sidebar() function, referring to the ID of the shop sidebar in the process, but no joy.

I am of the belief that WooCommerce should register its own sidebar when installed but there is no sign of this in the WP backend under appearance->widgets.

I have trawled through the WooCommerce theme files but the only sidebar-related thing I can find is a php file containing get_sidebar('shop') which is obviously included by other theme files. There is no sign of a sidebar with ID 'shop' being registered anywhere.

Any idea how I can get the correct sidebar showing on the shop pages? Thanks

I see my question has been downvoted a couple of times - I'm sorry if it's unclear but it is a genuine question. If anything needs clarifying it would help if you left a comment rather than just downvoting.

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How about using Woo Support routes? – kaiser Nov 20 '12 at 12:52

2 Answers

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WooCommerce have a sidebars plugin: http://www.woothemes.com/woosidebars/

This will give you really comprehensive control- you can create new sidebar areas for whatever pages you like.

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That could be an option but I'd rather avoid installing extra plugins when I can acheive the result in my theme. I just want to get to the bottom of why I can't seem to get my second shop sidebar to display. Does WooCommerce always use the index.php template or do the WC pages obey the templates they are given? – harryg Nov 20 '12 at 10:09
up vote 1 down vote

WooCommerce will by default look in your theme directory for a page template named woocommerce.php and if it exists will use that template when it renders a page. This way you can override the default WooCommerce page in an upgrade safe way.

The easiest way to implement this is to copy your page.php or single.php to woocommerce.php (in the same directory) then edit the file to replace the content area with a call to WooCommerce.

<?php woocommerce_content(); ?>

This gives you and the theme nearly complete control over the layout and sidebars.

Take a look at this post on themeing WooCommerce, hopefully this will be helpful to you.

WooCommerce Template Structure

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Edited to explain use of custom woocommerce.php file within the theme to allow total control over sidebars. – Stephen Nov 21 '12 at 16:10

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