Centric Pro – how do reduce footer widgets to 3?

[daymobrew]

Centric Pro 1.1 with Genesis 2.2.6.

I would like to reduce the number of footer widget areas from 3 to 4.
Rather than edit the Centric Pro files I have created a plugin. This is working quite well. For example, I added a stylesheet that depends on the Centric Pro one so is loaded after it.

I have been able to reduce the footer widget area on the front end but not on the back end (it still shows 4 widget areas).

//add_action('after_theme_setup', 'rd_footer_widgets_count', 5); // This did not work
add_action ( 'genesis_before_header', 'rd_footer_widgets_count', 2 );
function rd_footer_widgets_count() {
    // Change from 4 footer widgets to 3.
    remove_theme_support( 'genesis-footer-widgets' );
    add_theme_support( 'genesis-footer-widgets', 3 );

}

I chose 'genesis_before_header' with a low priority because genesis_skip_links() is called in genesis/lib/structure/header.php to check whether footer widgets are supported.
I tried 'after_theme_setup' because it calls genesis_register_footer_widget_areas() with the default priority to call genesis_register_widget_area() for each required footer widget.

I suppose that I could rename the 'footer-4' sidebar via the 'genesis_register_widget_area_defaults' filter, but that seems very hacky.

What hook should I be attaching to prevent the registration of widget area 'Footer 4'?

[Cathy @ WPBarista]

A plugin seems a long way around this one. Since footer widgets are always theme-dependent, is there a reason you don't just add that theme_support in the functions file? That will set the number of widgets in the front end and dashboard.

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[daymobrew]

My plugin is only for use with Centric Pro. I don't want to edit the Centric Pro theme files - I do realise that it is unlikely to change but I want to the customisations the right way.

In centric-pro/functions.php it has

//* Add support for 4-column footer widgets
add_theme_support( 'genesis-footer-widgets', 4 ); 

I am not exactly sure when this is run (it is not within an add_action function) so I have looked to see where the register_sidebar() function is called and working back from that.
genesis_register_widget_area() contains a call to register_sidebar()
genesis_register_footer_widget_areas() calls genesis_register_widget_area()
genesis_register_default_widget_areas() adds genesis_register_footer_widget_areas() to the 'after_theme_setup' hook.

This last bit is why I was trying to call my function with the 'after_theme_setup' hook with an earlier priority.

[daymobrew]

I have figured out how/when to unregister_sidebar('footer-4'). Here is my full code:

// Change from 4 footer widgets to 3. Both add_action() calls are necessary.
// This action sorts out the front end.
add_action ( 'genesis_before_header', 'rd_footer_widgets_count', 2 );
function rd_footer_widgets_count() {
    // Change from 4 footer widgets to 3.
    remove_theme_support( 'genesis-footer-widgets' );
    add_theme_support( 'genesis-footer-widgets', 3 );
}
// This code unregisters the footer-4 sidebar for the backend.
add_action('widgets_init', 'rd_disable_footer_widget_4', 1);
function rd_disable_footer_widget_4() {
    unregister_sidebar('footer-4');
}

I tried using only the 'widgets_init' hook but the footer-4 sidebar is still rendered on the front end!!

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