Wordpress Sidebars..Do they have to be the same on every page?

No, they can be different. This can be done in different ways. Unless your theme lets you do this (I think there might be a few that do), probably the easiest way to get what you want is to use "conditional widgets." In other words, you specify when certain widgets appear. For example, you could use Text-Widget-1 on the home page, but on the single post pages you could use Text-Widget-2 + an Image Widget, etc.

Lots of different solutions. I'd start looking around at plugins. Here's one (not sure how well it works as I haven't used it, but this is a conditional widget): WordPress › Widget Logic « WordPress Plugins

It could be a WP site. If you can find a plugin like WidgetLogic you can change what sidebar elements show up according to posts or pages.

There are others that randomize ads in the sidebar so each time you click on a new page/post you get a different selection of ads.

Rashell

Not easy but you can have different sidebar for certain webpages. (Note: "Pages", usually with capital P, are specific WP entries - as opposed to posts, that's why I used the word "webpages" referring to any webpage created/displayed within your WP installation.)

You need to understand how the WP template files work in a theme to see why it can get complicated...
If you know basic HTML - imagine a html file for your site that has a header part/image, some content and a sidebar and footer. Let's call it index.html.
Next, imagine this index.html file is "cut" in pieces and you have now 4 files:
header
index
sidebar
footer
(the extension can be anything, html or php)

Basically, that's how a WP theme is build: from template files that put together the initial main index. Now, the (bold) index part can be replaced by other template files (archive, page, single, category... etc.) but they ALL still call the same header, sidebar and footer!

Once you understand how it works and having some basic WP+hmtl+php knowledge... it can be done.

Another way is to just use a plugin that will change the content (i.e. the widget items) displayed in your sidebar depending on the page they are on. Widget Logic is such a plugin.

You can make any page however you want. Each page has a 'page template' when you create it. Your WP install will have a default set of these and if you're using a special theme they may have added some - but you can easily just create as many new ones as you like and then use them when you want a certain layout for a new page.

You can easily make a WP site be just like a static site like this.

Thanks you guys for your quick responses. I am excited to hear that it might not be as complicated as I had envisioned. Now I just need to figure out how I am going to go about it!

Thanks again, great input!

Just looked at the widget logic plugin. I think this is exactly what I am looking for.

It's really fun learning about all the different ways to customize your wp site!

Thanks again