Hooking up Page and Category specific widget area

[nomis]

Hi everyone,
I’m pretty new to WordPress, StudioPress and PHP so I hope someone can help me. My site has two blog pages. One is a standard blog, and the other is for tutorials. I’ve written the PHP below to add a widget area to the standard blog page, and also to its three category pages. I’ve added a custom menu to this area so that the viewer can switch between blog categories and also go back to the standard/all category page.

Here’s the thing - It works just fine. But the PHP just doesn’t look quite right to me. Shouldn’t there be an “else” statement at the end rather than an “elseif” ? When I add it, everything breaks. And do I really have to repeat all this code four times? Couldn’t I just group the page/category numbers in one block?

Any help cleaning up this very amateur code would be greatly appreciated.

//*  Register blog-submenu widget area
genesis_register_sidebar( array(
	'id'            => 'blog-submenu',
	'name'          => __( 'Blog Submenu', 'epik' ),
	'description'   => __( 'Place submenu for Blog Page here', 'epik' ),
) );
//* Hook blog-sub-menu widget area after header
add_action( 'genesis_after_header', 'add_blog_submenu' );
function add_blog_submenu() {
	if ( is_page('59') )
		genesis_widget_area ('blog-submenu', array (
		'before' => '<div class="wrap"><div class="blog-submenu widget-area">',
		'after'  => '</div></div>',
		)
	);
	elseif ( is_category('11') )
	genesis_widget_area ('blog-submenu', array (
		'before' => '<div class="wrap"><div class="blog-submenu widget-area">',
		'after'  => '</div></div>',
		)
	);
	elseif ( is_category('12') )
	genesis_widget_area ('blog-submenu', array (
		'before' => '<div class="wrap"><div class="blog-submenu widget-area">',
		'after'  => '</div></div>',
		)
	);
	elseif ( is_category('13') )
	genesis_widget_area ('blog-submenu', array (
		'before' => '<div class="wrap"><div class="blog-submenu widget-area">',
		'after'  => '</div></div>',
		)
	);
}

[Brad Dalton]

What breaks?

There's different ways to code else statements.

---

Tutorials for StudioPress Themes.

[nomis]

Thanks for your reply Brad,
The code works perfectly as written above, but when I change the final elseif to else, it goes white-screen.

Bearing in mind that it seems to work as is, is there anything actually wrong with the PHP above - should I change anything?

Thanks,
si

[Brad Dalton]

Works for me.

Try these
http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.elseif.php
http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.else.php

---

Tutorials for StudioPress Themes.

[coralseait]

Another option is a switch statement:

http://php.net/manual/en/control-structures.switch.php

---

Coral Sea IT

[Genesis Developer]

Using this Pro plugin you can easily achieve this. You do not need to write any extra code.

---

Download Genesis Featured Posts Combo Widget | Simple Grid Layouts Plugin for Posts, CPTs and terms
You can request new tips/help.

[nomis]

Thanks everyone for you help and advice. Eventually I narrowed it down to the code below, which is much more compact but still seems to work fine.

//* rise - Register blog-submenu widget area
genesis_register_sidebar( array(
	'id'            => 'blog-submenu',
	'name'          => __( 'Blog Submenu', 'epik' ),
	'description'   => __( 'Place submenu for Blog Page here', 'epik' ),
) );

//* rise - Hook blog-submenu widget area after header
add_action( 'genesis_after_header', 'add_blog_submenu' );
function add_blog_submenu() {
	if (is_page('59') || is_category('11') ||  is_category('12') || is_category('13'))
		genesis_widget_area ('blog-submenu', array (
		'before' => '<div class="wrap"><div class="blog-submenu widget-area">',
		'after'  => '</div></div>',
		)
	);
}

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