BuddyPress.org

Create a new widget area. It’s easy. Check out the following WP codex page for a bunch of links on how to widgetize a theme.

https://codex.wordpress.org/WordPress_Widgets#Resources

Basically, you create a new widget area and then in your child theme, you put the new widget area where you want to display your group widget.

I could do that (myself and abfinteractive are working together), but I’ve run into one problem.

I want to add the widgetized area to my child theme (and therefore put it in my child themes functions.php so it won’t get overwritten during a BP upgrade) but I’m not sure how to do this. When I’ve done it before it renders the original bp-default right sidebar (which we use) dead and only one works.

Is there a way around this, should I remove the sidebar from the bp-default’s functions.php and move that to the child themes with the new one?

Change the name of your widget area in your child theme.

You should be able to pretty much copy the widget area registration functions from the bp-default/functions.php file into your own child theme’s functions.php file.

Aw shucks. I saw this earlier today and was going to suggest it as an option.

http://digwp.com/2010/04/call-widget-with-shortcode/

PS tag the topic as resolved if you’ve got it figured out.