Description
Designed for simplicity and flexibility, Simple Page Sidebars gives WordPress users, designers, and developers the ability to assign custom sidebars to individual pageswithout making any template changes. Existing sidebars can also be assigned in quick edit and bulk edit modes, helping save you time.
In contrast to some of the more complicated plugins available, Simple Page Sidebars aims for basic, core-like functionality and integration thats easy to use without polluting your admin panel. And due to the way sidebars are saved, it utilizes built-in WordPress caching, so your site wont be bogged down with additional queries.
Simple Page Sidebars also ships with a Widget Area widget for pulling all the widgets from one sidebar into another.
Benefits
- No more site-wide, generic sidebars. Each page (or section) can have its own widgets.
- Complete control over the names of your custom sidebars.
- Assign the same sidebar to multiple pages.
- Modify a pages sidebar without creating an unnecessary revision.
Advanced Usage
If you want to assign custom sidebars to archive pages or replace multiple sidebars per page, this plugin likely wont be the best solution. However its flexible enough to handle a wide range of page-based use cases. It can even be configured to work with Custom Post Types by adding a couple lines of code:
function myprefix_init() { add_post_type_support( '{{post_type}}', 'simple-page-sidebars' ); } add_action( 'init', 'myprefix_init' ); Additional Resources
Notes
Custom Loops
If your page has any custom loops or queries, they need to be followed by wp_reset_query(), otherwise the global $post variable will no longer reference the correct post and by the time the sidebar is displayed, Simple Page Sidebars wont know which page is being viewed, possibly leading to an unexpected sidebar being displayed.
Theme Sidebars
Some themes register different sidebars for their page templates, which means there isnt a default sidebar that can be replaced. To use Simple Page Sidebars in this instance, you can create a child theme and force page templates with custom sidebars to use the default sidebar.
Screenshots
Installation
Installing Simple Page Sidebars is just like installing most other plugins. Check out the codex if you have any questions.
Setup
After installation, go to the Reading options panel (the Reading link under Settings) and choose which of your registered sidebars is the default sidebar.
FAQ
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If you havent added any widgets to your new custom sidebar, the default sidebar will continue to display. If you really want a blank sidebar, try adding an empty text widget.
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We recommend that you set your blog to use the default sidebar and create custom sidebars for pages (including the front/homepage). That way your blog page and posts all have the same sidebar.
However, if you defined a page for your posts in the Reading settings panel and assigned a custom sidebar to that page, that will work, too.
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Yes, just click the Screen Options tab in the upper right corner of your screen and uncheck the Sidebar option.
