WP question: how to show description from register_sidebar in the frontend?

To all the WordPress gurus: as you know, register_sidebar has a property called description since WP 2 .9. I can access that property in the widget code by using the $description variable, but is there a way to reference that variable in my theme?

What I would like to do is be able to show sort of a title for a widget ready area, without using other tricks or additional theme options. However, other ideas are welcomed as well.

Thanks!

Off the top of my head (meaning it’s untested), I think you could do something like this in order to show that description only when widgets are not present:

if( !dynamic_sidebar( 'my_sidebar' ) ){
  echo wp_sidebar_description( 'my_sidebar' );
}

(Of course, I think you could also just write whatever you want in place of the description function).

Hope that helps!

Chris

Hmm… that would be exactly what I would need and makes sense (since there is a wp_widget_description), but I couldn’t find any reference of wp_sidebar_description.

Chris, are you making things up?

Adrian

My bad, found it! Doesn’t work yet, but doing more tests…

LATER EDIT : Yeah, your solution works like a charm, just needed an echo. Thanks!

Haha it seems to be missing from the Codex, but I swear I’m not making it up! lol

It’s located in widgets.php http://core.trac.wordpress.org/browser/tags/3.3.1/wp-includes/widgets.php line 674

Oh sorry, after closer examination of the function, you have to print the result. I’ve edited my original code to show the correct version

rubiqube said
LATER EDIT : Yeah, your solution works like a charm, just needed an echo. Thanks!

You’re welcome!