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WordPress

Posted by Ethan Rips
Ethan Rips
3,258 Points

Troubleshooting--Widgets Dilemma

In our last thrilling episode, I was confused about the difference between the register_widget() function & register_sidebar(). That's sorted. But here's a related question.

When troubleshooting via Theme Check, I get this error message:

"Sidebars need to be registered in a custom function hooked to the widgets_init action. See: register_sidebar()."

Yet I have the following code in the functions.php file & I have widget areas in the WP admin area:

function wpt_create_widget( $name, $id, $description ) {

    register_sidebar(array(
        'name' => __( $name ),   
        'id' => $id, 
        'description' => __( $description ),
        'before_widget' => '<div class="widget">',
        'after_widget' => '</div>',
        'before_title' => '<h2 class="module-heading">',
        'after_title' => '</h2>'
    ));

}

wpt_create_widget( 'Page Sidebar', 'page', 'Displays on the side of pages with a sidebar' );
wpt_create_widget( 'Blog Sidebar', 'blog', 'Displays on the side of pages in the blog section' );

What am I missing? Should I have the function above located elsewhere as well? Does this pertain to a specific template?

2 Answers

Jonathan Grieve
MOD
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points
Jonathan Grieve
Jonathan Grieve
Treehouse Moderator 91,253 Points

I'm not an expert but I believe if your widget is showing up in the admin area and works on the front end you can safely ignore this message.

I do wonder about the way you;ve set up some of your key values

'name' => __( $name )

Is that the correct format or would

'name' => $name

work better for you?

Ethan Rips
Ethan Rips
3,258 Points

Good batch! Here's what the codex has to say about it:

Usage <?php $translated_text = __( $text, $domain ); ?>

Parameters $text (string) (required) Text to translate Default: None $domain (string) (optional) Domain to retrieve the translated text Default: 'default' Return Values (string) Translated text

Examples Make a string inside your plugin or theme translatable:

$translated = __( 'Hello World!', 'mytextdomain' );

'mytextdomain' needs to be a unique text domain used throughout your plugin/theme. This should always be directly passed as a string literal as shown above, not a string assigned to a variable or constant. E.g., this is incorrect:

$text_domain = 'mytextdomain'; $string = 'Hello World!'; $translated = __( $string, $text_domain );

This seems to work, but it will interfere in automatic parsing of your plugin/theme's files for translation.

george george
george george
5,755 Points
george george
george george
5,755 Points 
         register_sidebar( array(
        'name' => __( 'Main Sidebar', 'theme-slug' ),
        'id' => 'sidebar-1',
        'description' => __( 'Widgets in this area will be shown on all posts and pages.', 'theme-slug' ),
        'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
    'after_widget'  => '</li>',
    'before_title'  => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
    'after_title'   => '</h2>',
    ) );