Sidebar not appearing

Question

The sidebar isn't appearing on my site: http://richardclunan.com/

I have a Text widget in the sidebar, with some test text in it…

In 'Edit Page', there's no 'no sidebar' option…

What things might I need to do to get the sidebar to appear?

(I might have it so nothing appears in the sidebar area at all – just have it activated to shunt the text of the main area on the page across, so the line length is shorter – I'm mentioning this just in case it's not possible to have it activated and have nothing appear...)

Edit: I'm adding a couple of questions in response to an answer:

1. The word 'register_sidebar' appears in functions.php – does this mean dynamic sidebar support is enabled?

2. do i add the code SimonDowdles gave only to one file? Or to both page.php and single.php?

3. Where within the code on, say page.php, do i add the code SimonDowles gave?

4. Should i create a child theme for this change I want to make? If yes, what process do i follow to do this?

5. Do I replace the phrase 'id-of-desired-sidebar' from SimonDowdles code with the name of my sidebar? Where do I get the name from? In the Widgets section, there's a sidebar thing called 'Home Widgets' – is that the name I use? Hyphenated?

Answer 1

@Richard,

To answer your questions in their order:

1) Yes, it means dynamic sidebar(s) are supported

2) You add the code to whichever page files / templates you want the sidebar to render in

3) The sidebar will render EXACTLY where you place the code

4) You do not have to create a child theme, up to you, more on child themes here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Child_Themes

5) Yes, you replace my phrase with the identifier used when the register_sidebar or register_sidebars method was called in your functions.php file (it will be the value of the 'id' key in the array). You can read up on sidebars here: http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/register_sidebar

Regards, Simon

Answer 2

Have you for starters enabled dynamic sidebar support in your theme by adding the necessary functions to your functions.php file? Notably the register_sidebar or register_sidebars functions.

If you have, then in your page template(s) such as page.php, single.php, etc etc you would call the sidebar or add alternative content, an example could be:

<?php
if(function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('id-of-desired-sidebar')):
     // Nothing to do really, the call to dynamic_sidebar in the if condition would have already loaded the necessary sidebar content...
else:
     // Show alternative content here... or create necessary HTML to maintain right column...
endif;
?>

Have I understood you correctly?

[edit] As @ChipBennett quite rightly pointed out below, you can drop the function_exists() part of the above as the dynamic_sidebar function was added many versions ago. An updated code block would be as follows:

<?php
if(dynamic_sidebar('id-of-desired-sidebar')):
     // Nothing to do really, the call to dynamic_sidebar in the if condition would have already loaded the necessary sidebar content...
else:
     // Show alternative content here... or create necessary HTML to maintain right column...
endif;
?>