Easily assign custom, widget-enabled sidebars to any page.
Designed for simplicity and flexibility, Simple Page Sidebars gives WordPress users, designers, and developers the ability to assign custom sidebars to individual pages–without 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 that’s 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 won’t 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.
If you want to assign custom sidebars to archive pages or replace multiple sidebars per page, this plugin likely won’t be the best solution. However it’s 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' );
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 won’t know which page is being viewed, possibly leading to an unexpected sidebar being displayed.
Some themes register different sidebars for their page templates, which means there isn’t 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.
Installing Simple Page Sidebars is just like installing most other plugins. Check out the codex if you have any questions.
After installation, go to the Reading options panel (the Reading link under Settings) and choose which of your registered sidebars is the default sidebar.
If you haven’t 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.
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.
Yes, just click the “Screen Options” tab in the upper right corner of your screen and uncheck the “Sidebar” option.
simple_page_sidebars_show_edit_link_in_column
).simple_sidebar
function. Replaced by simple_page_sidebar
.simpsid_widget_areas
filter. Replaced by simple_page_sidebars_widget_areas
.simpsid_widget_area_defaults
filter. Replaced by simple_page_sidebars_widget_area_defaults
.simpsid_sidebar_name
filter. Replaced with simple_page_sidebars_last_call
.