php - Wordpress Conditional Sidebar Section Based off of Page ID

Solution:

You have a few problems with your code example:

1) $post->post_parent is not being checked against anything else, so it will only return true if it is a child page (not necessarily the child of the page you want to target)

2) get_sidebar() is being called incorrectly. If you want to get 'sidebar-test-may12.php' from your theme folder, you need to call get_sidebar('test-may12')

3) You're missing semicolons after your function calls

So your code should look like this:

<?php
    if(is_page(1997) || $post->post_parent == 1997) {
        get_sidebar('test-may12'); //get sidebar-test-may12.php
    }
    else{
        get_sidebar(); //get sidebar.php
    }
?>
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Let me know if that helps.

UPDATE: Bear in mind, $post->post_parent does NOT get the top-most ancestor ID of a child page. If you want to grab the top-level ID regardless of depth, consider doing this:

<?php
    $ancestors = get_ancestors(get_the_ID(), 'page');
    if(is_page(1997) || end($ancestors) == 1997)
        get_sidebar('test-may12'); //get sidebar-test-may12.php
    else
        get_sidebar(); //get sidebar.php
?>
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POSSIBLE SOLUTION: Building off your example and my proposed ancestry check, one thing you can do is have your template check to see if a special sidebar exists in your theme based on the parent page's slug. This way, if you decide a particular page needs a special sidebar for it and all of its children/grandchildren/great-grandchildren/etc. you just need to add it into your theme with a name of 'sidebar-{parent_slug}.php'. So:

<?php
$id = get_the_ID();
$ancestors = get_ancestors($id, 'page');
$top_page = $ancestors ? get_page(end($ancestors)) : get_page($id);

if(locate_template('sidebar-'.$top_page->post_name.'.php'))
    get_sidebar($top_page->post_name);
else
    get_sidebar();
?>
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This way, you don't need a ton of conditionals to decide which Sidebar file to load on a general Page template.

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