Today I ran into an interesting problem while developing a BuddyPress theme. I was attempting to include a custom sidebar using PHP’s “include” function. The WordPress codex page on “include tags” gives us this:
<?php include( TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebar-index.php’ ); ?>
The problem is that the above code doesn’t always work when you are utilizing a child theme (I am building a child theme based on the default BuddyPress theme). Rather, you should use the “locate_template” hook:
<?php locate_template( array( ‘sidebar-index.php’ ), true ) ?>
What the “locate_template” hook does is searches the child theme’s template folder before searching the parent theme’s template folder.
Pretty nifty, eh?
7 comments ↓
thanks this works perfect…
thanks for sharing.this is why I like wordpress ,community is awesome!
Hello, I’m facing some problem with this method, I tried to use a hook in child functions.php so I won’t touch files directly, but that didn’t work. Could you drop me a line via mail so I can show you what I’ve done and maybe show me where’s the error.
Marco,
Can you explain a little bit more?
So far, I have only used the “locate_template” hook from a child theme’s page and post template files, so I can’t vouch for how it might work in the functions.php file.
Hello, here’s what I’ve done in functions.php (shouty is the site theme name):
/*define constant*/
define(‘SHOUTY_DIR’, STYLESHEETPATH);
then:
/*here we insert, after the regular sidebar, Shouty’s left sidebar*/
add_action(‘bp_after_sidebar’, ‘shouty_include_sidebar_left’);
function shouty_include_sidebar_left() {
require(SHOUTY_DIR.’/sidebar_left.php’);
}
But this does not load the sidebar_left.php givin an error of file/folder not found in child theme dir, even though is actually there and I can’t figure why. I use this method with frameworks like Hybrid, Thematic and the new Genesis and it always works well.
ps. I tried hardcoding but doesn’t work either.
Marco,
Have you tried using include( TEMPLATEPATH . ‘/sidebar-index.php’ ); rather than define(‘SHOUTY_DIR’, STYLESHEETPATH); ?
Yes I did it at first.
TEMPLATEPATH leads you into the parent theme, giving the error of file/dir not found. Quite the same error as STYLESHEETPATH, this time from the child theme’s dir.
Marco,
Will the path work properly if you include your code in the template itself (i.e. index.php rather than in functions.php)?
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