Rendering a region in region--footer.tpl.php I have my social media links in my sidebar_first region. And these social icons are included in my footer. So in region--footer.tpl.php, I have rendered sidebar_first region  but it is not displaying, I know this is a wrong way to render a side bar region in footer region, does anybody have idea how can I achieve this:

&lt;?php if ($content): ?&gt;
&lt;footer id="footer" class="&lt;?php print $classes; ?&gt;"&gt;
  &lt;nav class="footer-nav"&gt;
    &lt;?php $foter_menu = menu_navigation_links('menu-footer-menu');
      $variables['footer_menu'] = print theme('links__menu_footer_menu', array('links' =&gt;      $foter_menu,'attributes'=&gt;array(''),'heading'=&gt;t('')));
      ?&gt;
  &lt;/nav&gt;
  &lt;div class="left-panel"&gt;
    &lt;ul class="social-networks"&gt;
      &lt;?php print render($page['sidebar_first']); ?&gt;
    &lt;/ul&gt;
  &lt;/div&gt;
&lt;/footer&gt;
&lt;?php endif; ?&gt;


then in my page--front.tpl.php

 &lt;?php print render($page['footer']); ?&gt;
as you wrote, you can override the region.tpl.php files, following the template name conventions - I would post a link, but drupal.org is down right now. A quick web search should get you to the right url and you can create a region specific tpl file. 

you shouldn't try to render one region in another, but you can duplicate the code in both region files, or of course, you could also include the code in two blocks, one for each region