Why do you want to use code to add a widget to a theme ?
Go to dashboard > Apparence > Widget and do your stuff from there.
If your theme has widgetized areas, this is how you have to do. BP is only a plugin, not a “site” or a CMS.
Of course, if you build your own theme from scratch, you have to create such areas first in the theme’s functions.php.
https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Widgets
https://codex.wordpress.org/Widgetizing_Themes
I currently have 5 different widget areas in my WordPress theme:
1) sidebar
2) footer slot #1
3) footer slot #2
4) footer slot #3
5) footer slot #4
However — all 5 of these widget areas completely disappear when viewed on mobile, which means I can’t put the BuddyPress login widget in any of them. So I want to place the widget in the one area that makes the most sense — which is in the top header section (ie: header.php)
So .. is that not programmatically possible? Isn’t there a way that I can accomplish this using WordPress’s the_widget() function?
– Yvan
Of course it’s possible and explained on this Codex page:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Widgetizing_Themes
But before, check your theme support. Maybe there is something related to mobile device ?
Thanks for your response, but the link you gave me doesn’t provide instructions on how to implement the “the_widget()” function. This page does:
https://codex.wordpress.org/Function_Reference/the_widget
“This template tag displays an arbitrary widget outside of a sidebar. It can be used anywhere in templates.”
But how do I reference the “(BuddyPress) Log In” widget using this function, and which additional parameters I’m supposed to pass to it, if any?
– Yvan
If you are going to modify a template to add a call to the_widget() function you might as well make it a dynamic_sidebar call, then you have a little more flexibility.
I actually just ended up installed the “Custom Sidebars” plugin, created a new sidebar, dragged the BuddyPress login widget to it, and then integrated the dynamic_sidebar call into my header.
Thanks!
– Yvan
Hugo – just one more question for you. If I wanted to add some required field checking to my BuddyPress login form/widget … how would you recommend that I do that?
– Yvan
? required field checking on what it’s a simple user/pass login both are required no
if the site templates header puts the document into full standards mode that html5 understands then you can use html5 form atts like ‘required=”required”‘
If you want an implementation of the BP login form but slightly extended you can grab mine on gitbub either run it as a plugin or grab the class function and run that from your functions.php or bp-custom.php you could then customize that.
https://github.com/hnla/hnla-bp-sidebar-me
