Widget Areas and Sidebars

Widget Areas and Sidebars — a practical guide to WordPress register_sidebar with clear examples you can reuse in real projects.

WordPress Theme Development Series (33/96). Prefer one article? Read the complete WordPress theme development tutorial.

Short description

Widget areas let users place blocks/widgets without editing code.

register_sidebar

add_action('widgets_init', function () {
  register_sidebar([
    'name' => __('Sidebar', 'acme-theme'),
    'id' => 'sidebar-1',
    'before_widget' => '<section class="widget">',
    'after_widget' => '</section>',
    'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">',
    'after_title' => '</h3>',
  ]);
});