How to display different widgets on specific pages, hide from other pages

Question

I want to display a dynamic sidebar on all pages, and a different sidebar on the homepage. There are also particular pages where I don't want to display either of them.

This code is not hiding the unwanted sidebar off of the Homepage; both sidebars show. How can I hide 'multipackage' from the homepage and only display 'singlepackage'? (I guess I thought that the elseif would take care of that. I have also tried just 'else' but I get a syntax error).

<?php
    if(!function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') 
        || !dynamic_sidebar('multipackage'));

    elseif (is_page_template('page-homepage.php')) {
        dynamic_sidebar('singlepackage');

        // also need to hide both sidebars from Page IDs 4 and 5

        }

    ?>

FWIW I have read up on the codex http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/dynamic_sidebar , this site, and other resources such as http://dreamwhisperdesigns.com/genesis-tutorials/load-sidebar-specific-pages/ (I am not an experienced php developer and syntax is where I often fail, if that's not already obvious!)

I would really like to avoid using a plugin for this. Thanks everyone in advance.

Answer 1

I want to display a dynamic sidebar on all pages, and a different sidebar on the homepage. There are also particular pages where I don't want to display either of them.

This code is not hiding the unwanted sidebar off of the Homepage; both sidebars show. How can I hide 'multipackage' from the homepage and only display 'singlepackage'? (I guess I thought that the elseif would take care of that. I have also tried just 'else' but I get a syntax error).

Assuming these conditions:

• singlepackage sidebar displays on the Site Front Page (or do you mean the Blog Posts Index?)
• multipackage sidebar displays on static pages
• multipackage sidebar does not display on static page with ID $id

This is the basic implementation:

<?php
if ( is_front_page() ) {
    // This is the Site Front Page,
    // display singlepackage
    dynamic_sidebar( 'singlepackage' );
} else if ( is_page() && ! is_page( $id ) ) {
    // This is a static page,
    // but NOT static page with ID $id;
    // display multipackage
    dynamic_sidebar( 'multipackage' );
}
?>

Note: if you want singlepackage to display when on the Blog Posts Index as opposed to on the Site Front Page, you'll want to use is_home():

<?php
if ( is_home() ) {
    // This is the Site Front Page,
    // display singlepackage
    dynamic_sidebar( 'singlepackage' );
} else if ( is_page() && ! is_page( $id ) ) {
    // This is a static page,
    // but NOT static page with ID $id;
    // display multipackage
    dynamic_sidebar( 'multipackage' );
}
?>

If you want to display default content (i.e. content that displays if no Widgets are applied to the specified widget area), then you'll need to use the if ( ! dynamic_sidebar( 'singlepackage' ) ), like so:

<?php
if ( is_front_page() ) {
    // This is the Blog Posts Index,
    // display singlepackage
    if ( ! dynamic_sidebar( 'singlepackage' ) ) {
        // default content goes here
    }
} else if ( is_page() && ! is_page( $id ) ) {
    // This is a static page,
    // but NOT static page with ID $id;
    // display multipackage
    if ( ! dynamic_sidebar( 'multipackage' ) ) {
        // default content goes here
    }
}
?>

Answer 2

What your code says in English is this:

If there is no dynamic_sidebar function OR there is no sidebar called multipackage ELSE IF this is the home page template THEN show the singlepackage sidebar.

... so you can see that there is no "THEN" part of the first condition.

<?php
if (function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('singlepackage') && is_page_template('page-homepage.php')) {
    dynamic_sidebar('singlepackage');
elseif( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('multipackage'));
    dynamic_sidebar('multipackage');
}
?>

This is saying IF the function dynamic_sidebar exists AND there is a singlepackage sidebar AND this is the home page template THEN show the singlepackage sidebar. ELSE IF the function dynmaic_sidebar exists AND there is a multipackage sidebar THEN show the multipackage sidebar.

Answer 3

Unfortunately none of the help here worked for my particular situation for one reason or another (was running into a lot of syntax errors and I don't know why). This is what ended up working:

<?php 
        if ( is_front_page() ) {
            dynamic_sidebar( 'singlepackage' );
        }
        elseif ( is_page(array('827','828','829','830') )) {    
            dynamic_sidebar('multipackage');
        } 
        else {
        }
    ?> 

which I sort of pieced together from the examples under "Variable Sidebar Content" on - http://codex.wordpress.org/Conditional_Tags