Completely disabling widgets

4 comments

1. One option would be to simply flush the widget code out of the sidebar.php file, as well as the header/footer/post pages if they are using widgets.

   However, take a peek at this code snippet (courtesy of this site), which you can add to your functions.php file and will disable the widgets. I think this would be a cleaner approach if you’re looking to change themes and sill have widgets disabled.

   <?php 
      add_filter( ‘sidebars_widgets’, ‘disable_all_widgets’ ); 
      function disable_all_widgets( $sidebars_widgets ) 
      { 
         if ( is_home() ) $sidebars_widgets = array( false ); 
         return $sidebars_widgets; 
      } 
   ?>
   

   Note that this will only disable the widgets on your home page, so you’ll need to find the additional conditionals for individual pages/posts/etc.

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2. If you make use of the internal functions from widgets.php, then it’s as easy as this:

       // final function makes most sense
       // (useing stuff like `$GLOBALS['wp_widget_factory']` will do nothing better than this ex.)
      // place inside your functions.php  
   
       unregister_widget( 'some widget' );
   
       // if my search results are right, these should be the available default widgets 
       // from /wp-includes/widgets.php
       Line 389:   'wp_widget_pages',
       Line 390:   'wp_widget_pages_control',
       Line 391:   'wp_widget_calendar',
       Line 392:   'wp_widget_calendar_control',
       Line 393:   'wp_widget_archives',
       Line 394:   'wp_widget_archives_control',
       Line 395:   'wp_widget_links',
       Line 396:   'wp_widget_meta',
       Line 397:   'wp_widget_meta_control',
       Line 398:   'wp_widget_search',
       Line 399:   'wp_widget_recent_entries',
       Line 400:   'wp_widget_recent_entries_control',
       Line 401:   'wp_widget_tag_cloud',
       Line 402:   'wp_widget_tag_cloud_control',
       Line 403:   'wp_widget_categories',
       Line 404:   'wp_widget_categories_control',
       Line 405:   'wp_widget_text',
       Line 406:   'wp_widget_text_control',
       Line 407:   'wp_widget_rss',
       Line 408:   'wp_widget_rss_control',
       Line 409:   'wp_widget_recent_comments',
       Line 410:   'wp_widget_recent_comments_control'
   

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3. remove_theme_support(‘widgets’) won’t work because of:

   function remove_theme_support( $feature ) {
   // Blacklist: for internal registrations not used directly by themes.
   if ( in_array( $feature, array( 'editor-style', 'widgets', 'menus' ) ) )
       return false;
   
   return _remove_theme_support( $feature );
   }
   

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4. The “Widgets” menu item is added by wp_widgets_add_menu(), called in the _admin_menu hook, as set up by wp_maybe_load_widgets(). You can disable this by unhooking it from _admin_menu or returning false for load_default_widgets.

   You can also unregister all sidebars as Bainternet suggested, and remove_theme_support( 'widgets' ).

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