Techie Corner

I’m modifying twentyeleven theme to have a left sidebar template for my page. By default twentyeleven have a sidebar template that showing the sidebar at the right column. To have a bit more choices for my new page, i would like to create a left sidebar template.

To create left sidebar template in WordPress TwentyEleven theme, follow the steps below:

• Go to the twentyeleven theme folder and duplicate the file sidebar-page.php to a new filename sidebar-left-page.php (make sure your filename is exactly the same as this)
• Now open this sidebar-left-page.php using text editor and change the “Template Name” to “Left Sidebar Template” and save it.
• Now copy the content below and paste it at the end of functions.php file.

  function twentyeleven_leftsidebar_ptemplate_body_classes( $wp_classes, $extra ){
    $classes = array();
    if( is_page_template( 'sidebar-left-page.php' ) ) :
    // correction for the Left Sidebar Template
      $classes[] = 'left-sidebar';
      $blacklist = array('right-sidebar','singular');
      // Filter the body classes
      foreach( $blacklist as $val ) {
        if (!in_array($val, $wp_classes)) : continue;
        else:
        foreach($wp_classes as $key => $value) {
          if ($value == $val) unset($wp_classes[$key]);
        }
        endif;
      }
    endif;
  
    if( is_page_template( 'sidebar-right-page.php' ) ) :
    // correction for the Right Sidebar Template
      $classes[] = 'right-sidebar';
      $blacklist = array('left-sidebar','singular');
      // Filter the body classes
      foreach( $blacklist as $val ) {
        if (!in_array($val, $wp_classes)) : continue;
        else:
        foreach($wp_classes as $key => $value) {
          if ($value == $val) unset($wp_classes[$key]);
        }
        endif;
      }
    endif;
  
  return array_merge($wp_classes, (array) $extra, $classes );
  }
  add_filter( 'body_class', 'twentyeleven_leftsidebar_ptemplate_body_classes', 20, 2 );
  

• Once the file is saved. You may edit any of your page and you will see “Left Sidebar Template” as one of the option under “Page Attributes” -> “Template”.
  
• Try to select this “Left Sidebar Template” as the page template and save then do a preview and you should see the sidebar showing at the left column now!

Tags: Wordpress, wordpress leftsidebar, wordpress template, wordpress theme left sidebar

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