Add #sidebar-2 to a custom page template

Question

I registered a few custom sidebars, and the corresponding code in my version of TwentyTwelve theme now looks like this:

    register_sidebar( array(
    'name' => __( 'Sidebar #1', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'id' => 'sidebar-1',
    'description' => __( 'Appears on posts and pages except the optional Front Page template, which has its own widgets', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
    'after_widget' => '</aside>',
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
) );

register_sidebar( array(
    'name' => __( 'Sidebar #2', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'id' => 'sidebar-2',
    'description' => __( 'Appears on posts and pages except the optional Front Page template, which has its own widgets', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
    'after_widget' => '</aside>',
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
) );

register_sidebar( array(
    'name' => __( 'Sidebar #3', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'id' => 'sidebar-3',
    'description' => __( 'Appears on posts and pages except the optional Front Page template, which has its own widgets', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
    'after_widget' => '</aside>',
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
) );

register_sidebar( array(
    'name' => __( 'Sidebar #4', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'id' => 'sidebar-4',
    'description' => __( 'Appears on posts and pages except the optional Front Page template, which has its own widgets', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
    'after_widget' => '</aside>',
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
) );

register_sidebar( array(
    'name' => __( 'Sidebar #5', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'id' => 'sidebar-5',
    'description' => __( 'Appears on posts and pages except the optional Front Page template, which has its own widgets', 'twentytwelve' ),
    'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
    'after_widget' => '</aside>',
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
) );

My custom page template uses #sidebar-1:

<div id="inner-page-sidebar">

<?php get_sidebar(); ?>

</div> <!-- END INNER-PAGE-SIDEBAR -->

Now I want to create a separate custom page template # 2, which should be identical to custom page template # 1, except it should use #sidebar-2 instead of #sidebar-1.

Question: How should I place the alternative sidebar there?

Thank you in advance for your help!

Answer 1

Instead of calling get_sidebar() call get_sidebar( 'somethingelse' );. It will attempt to load sidebar-somethingelse.php and if that doesn’t exist it will load sidebar.php. You can then modify the sidebar-somethingelse.php to load a different sidebar etc

I strongly recommend you look up how the template hierarchy works.

Answer 2

look in the sidebar pages that are in the template. All the code you need is already there. You will see something like

  if( is_active('sidebar-1')){
      get_sidebar('sidebar-1');
  }

I am not sure of the exact code as I am not sitting at my computer with the files. ALL you need to do is copy that code and change the names to match your sidebar. There are a few pages that you can look in. Like sidebar.php, front-page.phhp that is in the templates directory. That should call a sidebar or two.