Sidebar WordPress widget is an area on the sides of the main content on WordPress that provides information that may not necessarily be a part of the main content. As such, it is mostly vertical columns on the side of your WordPress sidebar menu. Nonetheless, the placement is dependent on the designer. It can be placed at the header, footer, or any other place the designer sees best. Also known as widget-ready areas, most WordPress themes will help you place the sidebars at an area of your choice. Information provided at the sidebars includes the latest articles, popular articles, and recent comments among others. Furthermore, sidebars are a great place for advertisements to be placed by 3rd party websites. This article will discuss the importance of sidebars and how to customize sidebar WordPress widgets.
Importance of sidebars to your WordPress site
As mentioned earlier, sidebar WordPress is widget ready areas where information not necessarily related to the main content is placed. For instance, you can make use of a sidebar to help third-party websites to place advertisements. In such a case, you are monetizing your site using advertising. You will earn from your WordPress custom sidebars as they display pay per view and pay per click advertisements.
Also, you can place information related to the content to entice your visitors to stay longer on your site. By so doing, you are improving the user experience for your clients and improving your chance to get more organic traffic and visibility for your site. This increased traffic is beneficial towards earning using your WordPress site.
However, in order to do so, you need to customize your WordPress sidebar menu well. Here are some of the ways to do so and improve the user experience for your site.
Also, you can read the Effects of Change in WordPress Theme over SEO Ranking Factors
1. Nested lists
These are default WordPress themes that present sidebar information. These nested lists present information in an unordered format.
These WordPress custom sidebars can feature CSS ID to make the list look different from section to section depending on how they are customized on the style sheet.
You may choose to use or not use a nested list for your WordPress theme customization. However, you need to know how they work if you choose to use them. You can learn more about styling your WordPress nested list via this link.
2. Navigation
The purpose of the sidebars on WordPress has been used to help the user navigate the site. The WordPress users have commonly used navigation to help people find more information within the website. As such, a customized sidebar WordPress helps you include items like archives, pages, categories, and most recent post. Another navigation customized on the style sheet.
You may choose to use or not use a nested list for your WordPress theme customization. However, you need to know how they work if you choose to use them. You can learn more about styling your WordPress nested list via this link.
3. Post lists
A part of using the WP custom sidebars is to help your visitors navigate through the archives and posts. Your visitors will see your most recent posts as well as archives once you use the custom sidebars.
When you use the WordPress default theme for your WordPress sidebar plugin, you get to view the archives for each month.
You can use the wp_get_achives () to help you customize how you showcase your post lists. Categorize by the most recent, most commented, most recent update; among others.
There are a number of plugins that will help you customize your list of related posts from the one you view. Each of them can be activated and appear on the sidebar WordPress list by using plugins such as Wasabi.
See More:- 10 Things to consider while selecting an Ideal WordPress Theme
4. Meta Data
As mentioned earlier, you are free to place anything on the WordPress sidebar menu. As such, some WordPress site owners prefer to place the metadata on the sidebar as it provides more information on the posts. You can also add links, dates, and categories to help your visitors navigate your site with much ease and get the precise information they need.
WordPress lessons provide guidance on how to create a sidebar in WordPress in the form of Metadata.
The metadata may include a short paragraph about who you are as well as information on what the site is about.
You can add this using standard CSS and HTML and place it where you need it on the sidebar. A good example is Have a passion for racing cars? Join the club. This site is dedicated to the hobby and passion of car racing.
5. Link Lists
You may need link exchanges for your site. One of the best ways to manage this is through blogrolls. You give visitors other sites to visit that are similar to your site.
These link lists are controlled using the WordPress link manager. You can display these links using either images or text.
You need to use a conditional tag that ensures the link list is only found on the front page and not on other web pages in your theme. The classic theme helps display link lists using this tag.
In addition, to display link lists on your custom sidebars, you can use the sidebar plugin for links that you need to be customized. For more information on highlighting link lists, you can visit this link.
6. Link lists of authors
The sidebar WordPress plugin can also be used to present author links to other websites. All you need to do is display name publicly by using the tag ($user->display_name) to link each author to their website.
Conclusion
In conclusion, from the above list, you can see that you can add a lot on your sidebar depending on the theme you require. Therefore, ensure you use WP custom sidebars to improve your WordPress website. As such, use the list to find out how well it is you need to utilize your sidebar as it will be a great way to improve how well your users navigate and improve user experience.
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