Create Widget Area Above Footer Widgets in Genesis

Recently, I had a client who needed a full width widget area above the footer widgets that showed up on every page. You probably know that Genesis themes make it super easy to add those 3 footer widgets by simply adding this code to your functions.php file:

//* Add support for 3-column footer widgets
add_theme_support( 'genesis-footer-widgets', 3 );

Changing that 3 to a 2 or 4 or even 1 changes how many widget areas you get. Of course, you will need to add some CSS to your style.css file to style them, but they will be there just above your footer with no fuss.

But the other Genesis hooks make widgets show up below these widgets and I needed a widget area above them. Luckily, I found this great tutorial: https://wpbeaches.com/add-full-width-row-footer-widgets-genesis-child-theme/

Basically, all you need to do is add the following code to your functions.php file:

//Create & Position Footer Header
add_action ('widgets_init','genesischild_footerheader');
function genesischild_footerheader_position ()  {
	echo '
';
	genesis_widget_area ('footer-header');
	echo '
';
}
add_action ('genesis_before_footer','genesischild_footerheader_position', 5);

*Note- in this case, the 5 doesn’t stand for the number of widgets but indicates where it will show up.

Again, I styled it with some CSS, but I love how easy Genesis makes adding widget areas!

Here’s what mine looked like:

And you can see it live here:
http://redskicreative.com/