Enabling Default Widgets in a Custom Theme

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In custom theme development, how does one enable default built-in widgets? Note I mean default built-in widgets, not custom ones. I tried the following example for a WP 3.12 blog by placing it in my theme’s functions.php file, trying to activate Pages by default. It didn’t work, but I don’t know why. 

function mytheme_widget_init(){
  $asOps = array(
    'classname' => 'widget_pages',
    'description' => __( "")
  );
  wp_register_sidebar_widget('pages', __('Pages'), 'wp_widget_pages', $asOps);
}

add_action('widgets_init','mytheme_widget_init');

What am I doing wrong?

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EDIT: THE SOLUTION

In my theme, I needed to re-edit sidebar.php and use this markup instead. 

<?php ?>
<div id="sidebar" role="complementary">
    <ul>

<?php if ( !dynamic_sidebar(1) ) : ?>
<?php endif; ?>

<?php if ( !is_active_sidebar(1) ) : ?>

    <li id="search" class="widget-container widget_search">
        <?php get_search_form(); ?>
    </li>

    <li id="categories" class="widet-container widget_categories">
        <?php wp_list_categories('show_option_none=&title_li=<h2>' . __('Categories') . '</h2>' ); ?>
    </li>

    <li id="archives" class="widget-container widget_archives">
        <h2 class="widget-title">Archives</h2>
        <ul>
            <?php wp_get_archives( 'type=monthly' ); ?>
        </ul>
    </li>

    <li id="pages" class="widget-container widget_pages">
        <ul>
            <?php wp_list_pages('title_li=<h2>' . __('Pages') . '</h2>'); ?>
        </ul>
    </li>

<?php endif; ?>

    </ul>
</div><!-- sidebar -->
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1 comment

  1. that’s not the way, wp_register_sidebar_widget is used to create widgets.
    if you want your sidebar to display widgets by default use [dynamic_sidebar()][1] in your theme eg from the 2010 theme: 

    <div id="primary" class="widget-area" role="complementary">
            <ul class="xoxo">

<?php
    /* When we call the dynamic_sidebar() function, it'll spit out
     * the widgets for that widget area. If it instead returns false,
     * then the sidebar simply doesn't exist, so we'll hard-code in
     * some default sidebar stuff just in case.
     */
    if ( ! dynamic_sidebar( 'primary-widget-area' ) ) : ?>

            <li id="search" class="widget-container widget_search">
                <?php get_search_form(); ?>
            </li>

            <li id="archives" class="widget-container">
                <h3 class="widget-title"><?php _e( 'Archives', 'twentyten' ); ?></h3>
                <ul>
                    <?php wp_get_archives( 'type=monthly' ); ?>
                </ul>
            </li>

            <li id="meta" class="widget-container">
                <h3 class="widget-title"><?php _e( 'Meta', 'twentyten' ); ?></h3>
                <ul>
                    <?php wp_register(); ?>
                    <li><?php wp_loginout(); ?></li>
                    <?php wp_meta(); ?>
                </ul>
            </li>

        <?php endif; // end primary widget area ?>
            </ul>
        </div><!-- #primary .widget-area -->