Okay, if you’re new to WordPress, more than likely all of the themes you are looking at using are widgetized. For that special occasion that your WordPress blog theme isn’t widgetized, here’s a simple way of how to hack your theme, and with just a little bit of code, you can widgetize your theme.
Here’s what the official page from Automattic says:
Instead of register_sidebar() you should use register_sidebars(n) where n is the number of sidebars. Then place the appropriate number in the dynamic_sidebar() function, starting with 1. (There are several other ways to use these function. See the API). You can even give your sidebars names rather than numbers, which lets you maintain a different set of saved sidebars for each theme.
You edit this in the functions.php file. If you don’t have a functions.php file, then you probably don’t have a widgetized theme. Here’s an example of some code that you could put in your functions.php file:
<?php
if ( function_exists(’register_sidebar’) )
register_sidebar();
?>
Then, right beneath the <ul> tag in the sidebar.php file, add this little piece of code:
<?php if ( !function_exists(’dynamic_sidebar’)
|| !dynamic_sidebar() ) : ?>
Then, right above the closing </ul> tag, put this code:
<?php endif; ?>
Pretty simple huh? Now that old-school WordPress theme that you are using is completely widgetized and customizable!