How to give every BuddyPress component it’s own dedicated sidebar

Hi folks! It’s been a while since I’ve been able to write awesome BuddyPress tutorials. It’s not because I got bored with BuddyPress, there was simply too much BuddyPress related stuff going on. I spent some time working with the WooThemes guys on Canvas for BuddyPress and my BP-Slick Theme has almost sold 100 copies. And I’m also working on a something extremely secret called Infinity, which should make all you BuddyPress lovers really happy!

Anyways I’ve decided to pick up the pace again, and have some great tricks in the works. This being the first one; Creating dedicated sidebars for every BuddyPress component. Let’s get started shall we?

Step 1: Adding the sidebars in functions.php of your Child Theme

Like always we’ll be using the Parent-Child structure to make customizations to our themes, and stay far away from the templates in BP-Default. So let’s start by adding the following code to functions.php of our Child Theme.

/* Register Extra sidebar attributes */
if (function_exists('register_sidebar')) {
register_sidebar(
array(
'name' => 'Sitewide Sidebar',
'before_widget' => '
',
'after_widget' => '
',
'before_title' => '
',
'after_title' => '
',
)
);
register_sidebar(
array(
'name' => 'Activity/Blog Sidebar ',
'before_widget' => '
',
'after_widget' => '
',
'before_title' => '
',
'after_title' => '
',
)
);
register_sidebar(
array(
'name' => 'Forum Sidebar',
'before_widget' => '
BuddyPress Conditionals to show the right sidebars on the right components!
              
Step 2: Modifying sidebar.php to show the right sidebars on the right components
              
Open up sidebar.php in your Child Theme (copy it over from BP-Default first, if you haven’t done that) and go around line 69. As you can see the sidebar is being called:
              

              
We are going to replace that line with the following code.
              
php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar')
 || !dynamic_sidebar('Sitewide Sidebar') ) : ?>
 php /* GROUP SIDEBAR */ if(bp_is_group()){
 if(!dynamic_sidebar("Group Sidebar")){?>
 
 
 

              
So what does all of this code mean? What we’re doing is telling WordPress to only show a certain sidebar on a specific type of BuddyPress component. This is done with so-called “if statements”.  If you convert the code to regular talk it would be like this:
              
If there’s a sidebar called Sitewide Sidebar registered, show it at all times. Then check on what type of BuddyPress page we are and show the right sidebar. If we’re not on a BuddyPress page just show the Blog/Activity sidebar.
              
That’s the logic behind the code, and you should now have a dedicated sidebar for your BuddyPress components. I’m planning to do a follow-up Trick about assigning dedicated sidebars for popular plugins, and how to show specific widgets on specific pages only!
              
In the meantime you can go ahead and submit your own awesome BuddyPress tricks here on BP-Tricks!
              

                

                  
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Something about bowe
BuddyPress fanatic, WordPress Theme designer and MultiSite community builder. Proud co-founder of PressCrew. Loves to use awesome in every sentence. Often described as a Dutch Treehugging Hippie.