WordPress MU

I'm sure this has been covered a thousand times but I can't seem to find an answer to this so I thought I'd post a question. I'm creating a site where people who travel and camp in their VW's busses can post their images and journals online. The site is going to be very simple for the end user. Currently I'm just going to allow Add Post and Add Gallery (using Nextgen). Everything else has been disabled in their blogs aside from a few of the settings. I don't want to give users access to appearance and have them modifying the layout of the site.

Here's what their interface looks like:

Example

Each blog should have in their sidebar: Login, Recent Blog Updates, Recent Gallery Additions, Search. (I'll be adding more eventually)

I know that I'm going to have to hard code this into the theme but I'm not sure where to start. The theme was created using Artisteer so it's all ready to go, I just need to add the appropriate code to the sidebar. Is there a way that I can setup my homepage to look exactly as I'd like it to look and then grab the code from there and paste it into the sidebar.php file? For example I have a sidebar with the code:

<div class="art-sidebar2">
<?php if (!art_sidebar(2)): ?>

<?php endif ?>
</div>

Where would I find the code to add the login button that I was able to add using widgets but I would rather just hard code in?

My domain is http://vwtravelblog.com/ and I have a couple of widgets initialized so if there's a way to view the source of that page and then copy/paste the code into the sidebar it would certainly save me a lot of trouble. If there's a plugin that does this somehow then all the better. Thanks in advance.

I'm need to do the same thing as well and am looking for the same info...

Get rid of the sidebar widgitizing call:

<?php if (!art_sidebar(2)): ?>

<?php endif ?>

Then for what to hard-code in there, the best place to look is in the sidebar.php code from various themes and Function Reference in the Codex .

Simple login:

<li>
    <?php wp_loginout(); ?>
</li>

Search:

<li>
    <h2><?php _e('Search'); ?></h2>
    <?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/searchform.php'); ?>
</li>

Recent Posts:

<li>
    <h2><?php _e('Recent Posts'); ?></h2>
    <ul>
    <?php wp_get_recent_posts() ?>
    </ul>
</li>

Also, you'll need to pay attention to is whether your theme uses the standard wordpress sidebar structure (UL/LI) or if it uses something like <div> blocks for them.

Thanks kgraeme for pointing me in the right direction. That's the kind of info I was looking for...I hope. :) Much reading to do.

I agree, thanks kgraeme.