How do I make the sidebar appear?

[Kajakster]

Hello,
I just started with yellow with a fresh install. I like the idea of a simple website.

I do not have any coding or Web development background.
This is a fresh install, I selected "blog" during Installation.

However, I can not get the sidebar to show. I uploaded a sidebar.md to the shared folder (content as in the example in the git hub documentation) , and also to the blog folder, but they don't show up on the website. Samegoes for header and footer respectively .

Is there anything I have forgotten? Do I have to edit the page.md for activating the Sidebar?

Code of sidebar.md:

---
Title: Sidebar
Status: shared
---
Neu

[blogchanges /blog/]

Tags

[blogtags /blog/]

[nzyeehaa]

learning by doing is fantastic, but can be a steep curve

I will throw you a few crumbs to help the learning....

it looks like you are doing everything correctly again - well done...
on a brief investigation - it looks like the default theme doesnt include sidebar... ( fyi @markseu )
{...or navigation-tree as you discovered already}

try berlin theme which includes sidebar layout (see berlin-default.html)

and the basic code that brings it in
<?php echo $this->yellow->page->getPage("sidebar")->getContent() ?>

p.s: you should of course include a check to make sure a sidebar page exists - or your site may break when there was none

[nzyeehaa]

good job, if any comments have helped - mark it as answered

[cellio]

Hello. I'm also learning by doing -- new to SSGs and Yellow, and never used PHP before. I tried adding the PHP line suggested here to both blog.html and blogpages.html, after installing the Berlin theme, but I'm not seeing a sidebar. Where in those files am I supposed to put the line? Do I need to do something else to turn the sidebar on? I'd like to be able to figure this out for myself but I'm a little lost and don't quite know what I should be looking for yet -- thanks!

[nzyeehaa]

@cellio welcome to yellow....
the berlin theme already includes the code to show the sidebar, see here...

So if it is still not working for you, you have either not added a sidebar or have added it incorrectly.

Kajakster added a sidebar.md to the shared folder.
Or you can add sidebar.md in a content folder

[cellio]

Thank you. I see now. A few things I figured out from this thread:

• Installing the Berlin theme doesn't change the layout; you have to copy berlin-default.html to default.html.
• When you edit blog.html and blogpages.html to add the sidebar, you need both of the first two
  s, not just the one named "sidebar".
• Trying to edit the php line in the first comment into blog[pages].html was a red herring.

Slowly I'm learning. Thanks for the help.

[tikita]

First I changed Yellow to the 'Berlin' theme.

Then I put a new sidebar.md in the folder content/shared.

Then I renamed the file berlin-default.html in the folder system/layouts to default.html (and removed the previous default.html before).

The new sidebar now appeared on the right (!) side of the called page. I would prefer the sidebar to be on the left, but I don't know how to do that yet.

[markseuffert]

Check what's written in the documentation of themes.

If a theme doesn't mention a sidebar, then it does not support it out-of-the-box. Datenstrom Yellow targets small websites, with less features and fewer distractions. As we're getting closer to updating themes, we might add theme(s) with two column-layout. It's a feature we are looking to provide.

See also #531.

[tikita]

> As we're getting closer to updating themes, we might add theme(s)
> with two column-layout. It's a feature we are looking to provide.

I would be very happy if there was a theme that had the navigation not at the top but on the left side. And it would not be important that there is a two column-layout.

Many regards, Heiner