{"id":1500,"date":"2009-12-27T22:01:48","date_gmt":"2009-12-28T03:01:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/?p=1500"},"modified":"2011-02-05T18:17:52","modified_gmt":"2011-02-05T23:17:52","slug":"wordpress-sidebars-pages-search-engine-optimization","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/judykat.com\/ken-judy\/wordpress-sidebars-pages-search-engine-optimization\/","title":{"rendered":"How to make wordpress sidebars only appear on certain pages for search engine optimization"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was reading the recommendations in yoast.com’s post on wordpress seo<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Do you really need to link out to all your buddies in your blogroll site wide? Or is it perhaps wiser to just do that on your front page?<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I want to link out on my homepage but I don’t need my sidebar to extend two screens below the content on my individual post pages.<\/p>\n

So, it appears desirable to have elements of the sidebar (e.g. the blogroll and external social networking arcana) only appear on the homepage of my blog.<\/p>\n

Thanks to some sample code from wpcandy.com<\/span>, this was trivially easy to implement.<\/p>\n

I modified the functions.php in my theme to register three sidebars. I called them Top Right Sidebar, Front Page Sidebar, and Bottom Right Sidebar.<\/p>\n


\nif ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
\tregister_sidebar(array(
\t\t'name' => 'Top Right Sidebar',
\t\t'before_widget' => '', \/\/ Removes <li>
\t\t'after_widget' => '', \/\/ Removes <\/li>
\t\t'before_title' => '<h2>',
\t\t'after_title' => '<\/h2>',
\t));<\/p>\n

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
\tregister_sidebar(array(
\t\t'name' => 'Front Page Sidebar',
\t\t'before_widget' => '', \/\/ Removes <li>
\t\t'after_widget' => '', \/\/ Removes <\/li>
\t\t'before_title' => '<h2>',
\t\t'after_title' => '<\/h2>',
\t));<\/p>\n

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
\tregister_sidebar(array(
\t\t'name' => 'Bottom Right Sidebar',
\t\t'before_widget' => '', \/\/ Removes <li>
\t\t'after_widget' => '', \/\/ Removes <\/li>
\t\t'before_title' => '<h2>',
\t\t'after_title' => '<\/h2>',
\t));
\n<\/code><\/p>\n

Then I modified my sidebar.php to render those three sidebars if the dynamic_sidebar<\/code> function exists also making the Front Page Sidebar<\/em> conditional on is_front_page()<\/code>.
\n
\n<?php
if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('Top Right Sidebar') ) : else :
?>
\n\/\/default markup for the top sidebar goes here<\/span>
<?php endif; ?>
\n\/\/renders only if the current page is the front page, i.e. is_front_page()<\/span>
<?php if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') &&
is_front_page() && dynamic_sidebar('Front Page Sidebar') ) {} ?>
\n<?php
if ( function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') && dynamic_sidebar('Bottom Right Sidebar') ) : else :
?>
\n\/\/default markup for the bottom sidebar goes here<\/span>
<?php endif; ?><\/code><\/p>\n

\"WordpressIn my widgets admin I now have three sidebars listed:<\/p>\n