Remove non-widget’d sidebar items

[splorp]

With a fresh WordPress installation, the Search and Meta widgets are automatically included in what’s currently designated as our “sidebar-2” (inner right) aside element.

We’ve also been including our own custom Search and Meta components in the “sidebar-1” (outer right) aside element.

This makes for a somewhat repetitive sidebar configuration upon initial installation.

I suggest that we remove our custom Search and Meta components and rely on the ability to customize the sidebars with WordPress-supplied widgets.

This also opens up a discussion around whether the parent theme should even include two sidebar areas. Frankly, I’d be happy one one sidebar out of the box … with the ability to add a second sidebar via a child theme.

Thoughts? Concerns? Anyone? Bueller?

[cdharrison]

Didn't realize they were including widgets out of the box, now. I agree... including default fallbacks seems a bit unnecessary. As far as having one or 2 widget areas. I don't know if there's an easy answer for that. With my child theme, I've got a three-column layout and I'm using sidebar-1 and -2 for two of the columns. I think having them both will give developers a little more flexibility.

[splorp]

I’m not opposed to supporting two sidebars. We should add some logic to the theme so if a widget area is empty, the sidebar is not inserted into the template. When I look at how I’m using the theme, the less I require two sidebars.

[splorp]

After looking at the way we have sidebar.php put together, it appears the our custom sidebar elements only appear if the widget plugin is disabled or there are no widgets added to a particular sidebar.

Maybe we just need to finesse the display logic a bit.

Since no widgets are added to sidebar-2 by default, our Search and Meta components appear. But WordPress adds the Search and Meta widgets to sidebar-1 by default, hence the duplication. We should be probably adding our custom components to the same sidebar that WordPress uses, leaving the second sidebar empty by default.

I think that makes the most sense.