Unable to add widgets to sidebars in custom theme

Question

I'm trying to add a footer area to wordpress so I can drop widgets and things there. I see my footer area in the admin section, but if I add a text (or any other) widget and then save it, nothing shows up on the footer. If I refresh the page, the widget that I dragged to the right in my footer area is no longer listed there.

I checked the network requests and there aren't any errors that I'm seeing. Did I miss a step?

footer.php contains:

<?php
get_sidebar('footer_widget_area');
wp_footer();
?>

functions.php contains:

// Register widgetized areas
function theme_widgets_init() {
    // Area 1
  register_sidebar( array (
  'name' => 'Primary Widget Area',
  'id' => 'primary_widget_area',
  'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget-container %2$s">',
  'after_widget' => "</li>",
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
  ) );

    // Area 2
  register_sidebar( array (
  'name' => 'Secondary Widget Area',
  'id' => 'secondary_widget_area', 
  'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget-container %2$s">',
  'after_widget' => "</li>",
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
  ) );

    // Footer
  register_sidebar( array (
  'name' => 'Footer',
  'id' => 'footer_widget_area', 
  'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget-container %2$s">',
  'after_widget' => "</li>",
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
  ) );
} // end theme_widgets_init

add_action( 'init', 'theme_widgets_init' );

Update: It's not just the new widget area I can't add widgets to, it's all of them.

Answer 1

You are using get_sidebar incorrectly. That function "Includes the sidebar.php template file from your current theme's directory." And if you include a parameter, it loads a file matching that parameter name, not a sidebar of that name.

If a name ($name) is specified then a specialized sidebar sidebar-{name}.php will be included.

What you want is dynamic_sidebar instead.

dynamic_sidebar('footer_widget_area');

Answer 2

I think that using dynamic_sidebar you should actually be calling the index-order. Since dynamic_sidebar is supposed to be this:

dynamic_sidebar( $index ); 

So if you have 3 sidebars, then it should be:

dynamic_sidebar( 'sidebar-3' );