Yes, the sidebar is designed that way. If you like to keep the default information, you’ll need to place to default code outside of the dynamic sidebar code. Look for this code inside the sidebar.php. I removed the php opening and closing tags so that the code is displayed on screen. Just place the code outside of the IF statement. Hope that helps.

if ( !function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’)
|| !dynamic_sidebar() ) :

endif;

I like your theme, but have a little problem with widgets. I added one (just goodblogs), but when I did that, everything else in the sidebar went away. What I’d like to do is have some widgets underneath the default sidebar content, such as the page and site lists, calendar, archives, and so on.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Also, I was able to fix the problem with my links showing up on the sidebar whenever I created a “Page”. I like the links being on my front page, but not anywhere else. Here’s the fix for anyone else who would like the same:

Have a look on sidebar.php.

Go near the bottom of the page. The comment there says that the line
below will be executed if the current page is the home page. Actually
this is not what the if statement on the same line does. The if statement
is true if is_home() or is_page(). Since you do not want to display the
links when is_page() simply remove the “|| is_page()”.

Easy fix!

Thanks goes to Apostolos Dountsis for pointing this out to me.

It looks good because of your design, and your help with setting it up.

I’m REALLY happy with it. The only other thing that I want to accomplish is to replace the gray background with a “financial newspaper” wallpaper, similar to the one found at Under the Counter, which will help clue users to recognize what my blog is about right away.

Can’t seem to find such a wallpaper just yet, though.

I changed the header height to 160px and it solved my dilemma. I added your CCS code and everything worked just fine. I’ll try to figure out which sidebar code will be the one I need to change.

I appreciate your time and help.

1. You need to add this at the end of the CSS to change colors of the header/title.

h1 a:hover {
text-decoration: none;
color: #E4D3A6;
}

2. It is possible to remove the space between the header and body/sidebar. Play around with the padding in the Header section, .pagepost and .post.

3. There’s code in the sidebar.php that displays partial sidebars for certain pages such as Archives, etc. This can be remove or modified to display a consistent sidebar for all pages.

I hope this will lead you to where you need to go. Let me know if you need anymore help.

I use your theme for my blog and was wondering if you would consider a few upgrade thoughts, or point out how I could make the changes?

1. I would like the header/title to change colors when the mouse moves over it. The same color as the posts headers would be a nice look.

2. Could the space between the header and the body/sidebar be reduced? I think it would look nicer if there was less empty space.

3. The archives and categories pages display a partial sidebar, without the links and meta. I like it that way. Is there anyway this same sidebar length can be applied to any WordPress-generated pages, such as About, Contact, Disclaimer, etc.?

Thank you very much!

Mike

Black-Letterhead is quite flexible. If you want to increase the page width, you’ll need to modify three entries in style.css. Keep things consistent like increasing all values by 200px.

Widen page width from 760px to 960px.

#page {
width: 960px;
}

#sidebar {
margin-left: 745px;
}

.narrowcolumn {
width: 650px;
}

For consistency, you may want to increase .widecolumn and footer sections as well.

Good luck. Let me know how it turns out.