Ever wanted to use different sidebar widgets on different pages? Woo Themes offer a new way of using different sidebar widgets on different pages and its called a sidebar manager. It’s a great idea so you can choose to show only content which is relevant to a particular post or pages content in your sidebar widgets.
There are other ways to do this by using custom PHP coding with hooks & functions which could be rather time consuming if you have several hundred pages. The sidebar manager takes less than one minute and works perfectly.
I did try a plugin which is supposed to do this but it wasn’t reliable so i deactivated it.
Creating a custom sidebar widget takes 3 easy steps once you’ve entered the Sidebar Manager screen:
- Start by selecting a template from the menu on the left for your new sidebar.
- Select the sidebar it will replace
- Go to your Widgets page and place a widget into your new custom sidebar
In this example, i decided to place a banner for an eCommerce plugin on the same post as the eCommerce theme gallery. Its totally relevant and the plugin offers both a free and premium version so it should attract interest.
Rather than put the same content on every single page and post sidebar, customizing your content should work better for you.
Select a Template
You can choose any template based on existing pages or post tags.
Step 2 is to select the sidebar it will replace. This simply means you select which widget you want it to replace.
Sidebar to Replace
The last step is to go to the Widgets area and drag a widget into the new sidebar.
New Custom Sidebar Widget
Example: I’ve chosen to replace the primary sidebar widgets on all Seo & WordPress Seo Posts, including category pages, with a 7 Day Free SEO eCourse which replaces the Getting Started with WordPress Guide. This makes sense and is more relevant to visitors wanting to learn about SEO.
The sidebar manager is included in the latest version of the Woo Framework on all Woo themes.
What do you think? Do you like the sidebar and think its helpful?
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