Whether you are a website owner or even a blog site developer, sidebar widget margin customization could get tricky. Especially if you are not well conversant with the website theme and sidebar margin customization properties. Having said that, allow us to take you in for a ride through this beginner’s guide. In particular, for basic learning and understanding.
More so, about the basic items found during a Sidebar Margin customization. This is an all-exclusive and inclusive guide for WordPress Website Owners and Builders. But first, let’s understand what a Website Sidebar is. Shall we? On that note, WordPress Sidebar is a theme feature that allows you to organize your content so it can attract the reader’s attention.
In Website Design & Development, a Sidebar Widget is exactly what it sounds like. It’s simply a shorter piece of text or graphics content that accompanies a longer article in a publication. A Sidebar always appears on the side of an article, hence the name. For example, the jmexclusives blog site utilizes some Sidebar features alongside its various lucrative Blog Articles.
Additionally, Sidebar margin customization appears on various platforms. Especially for news and blogging platforms. Such as a magazine or newspaper, often graphically separate but related to the main idea.
WordPress Sidebar Widget Margin Customization
A sidebar in WordPress is referred to as a widget-ready area. Particularly used by WordPress themes to display information that is not a part of the main content.
However, it is not always a vertical column on the side. It can be a horizontal rectangle below or above the content area, footer, header, or anywhere in the theme.
Basically, a WordPress website Sidebar Margin representation looks like the above graphic image showcases.
On the other hand, the usage of sidebars varies and depends on the choices of the theme designer. Many WordPress themes support multiple sidebars also known as widget-ready areas.
Why Sidebar Widget Margin Customization Is Important
In reality, sidebars play an important role in designing the layout of a WordPress website. For instance, displaying content other than the main articles of a website. For example, a shortlist of recent articles, recent comments, a list of pages, or popular articles on a website can easily be displayed across the entire site Sidebar Margin Field.
Additionally, it can also be used to display advertisements from third-party websites. Whereby, users can drag and drop items into sidebars from Appearance » Widgets in the admin panel.
By the same token, some WordPress themes come with highly configurable options. Allowing Webmasters to create dynamic layouts for different sections of a website. And of course, which allows users to add their own sidebars from a drag-and-drop interface.
How To Add A Dynamic Sidebar Widget
Widgets are such an integral part of WordPress themes that it is hard to imagine a WordPress theme without widgets. Widgets are executable scripts that you can simply drag and drop in your sidebars or any other widget-ready area in your theme.
Many of our readers utilize widgets to add custom elements to their sidebar. However, this article is for those curious users who want to learn how to add dynamic widget-ready sidebars or widget-ready areas in WordPress themes.
Registering Sidebars or Widget Ready Areas in WordPress
The first thing you need to do is to register your sidebar or widget-ready area for your theme. You can register multiple sidebars and widget-ready areas. Copy and paste this code into your theme’s functions.php file
dget %2$s">', 'after_widget' => '</aside>', 'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">', 'after_title' => '</h3>', ) ); register_sidebar( array( 'name' =>__( 'Front page sidebar', 'wpb'), 'id' => 'sidebar-2', 'description' => __( 'Appears on the static front page template', 'wpb' ), 'before_widget' => '<aside id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">', 'after_widget' => '</aside>', 'before_title' => '<h3 class="widget-title">', 'after_title' => '</h3>', ) ); }add_action( 'widgets_init', 'wpb_widgets_init' ); |
In this code, we have registered two sidebars. We have given them names and descriptions to identify them on the Widgets screen.
The description parameter can be used to tell users where this sidebar appears in the theme. The wpb is the name of the theme we are working on, it is used here to make these strings translatable. You should replace it with your theme name.
Adding Dynamic Sidebar Widget Ready in WordPress Theme Files
So far we have only registered Dynamic Sidebars. Users can drag and drop widgets into these sidebars from the Appearance » Widgets screen. However, these sidebars will not appear on your site until they are called in a template like sidebar.php or anywhere else you want to display them.
To add these widget areas, edit the template file where you want to display them and paste this code:
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<?php if ( is_active_sidebar( 'sidebar-1' ) ) : ?> <div id="secondary" class="widget-area" role="complementary"> <?php dynamic_sidebar( 'sidebar-1' ); ?> </div><?php endif; ?> |
In this example code, we have used the sidebar id to call the sidebar we want to display here. Change the sidebar id to display another sidebar. For example, you can register three sidebars for the footer area and then call them one by one in your theme’s footer.php template.
Widgets can be very powerful. You can add widgets to your posts and page content, make your text widgets colorful, or extend the power of default WordPress widgets. Rightly placed widget-ready sidebars allow users to add custom elements to their websites using a simple drag and drop interface.
Creating a “Sticky” Floating Widget in WordPress
Floating elements that stick to your screen as you scroll tend to have a higher click-through and conversion rate than static objects. This is why many websites make use of floating elements on their website. As a matter of fact, e have seen elements like header bar, footer bar, sidebar widget with newsletter optin, etc.
In the past, we showed you how to create a sticky floating footer bar in WordPress. Below is the image of a Sticky Sidebar Widget Demo.
With this in mind, I will show you how to create a sticky floating sidebar widget in WordPress. Above all, so you can make your email newsletter stand out even more.
Note: This works for all types of sidebar widgets, not just your email optins. And you can use it for product promotions, popular posts, Flickr photos, Google calendar, and basically anything else that you like.
Using The Q2W3 Fixed “Sticky” Sidebar Widget
The first thing you need to do is install and activate the Q2W3 Fixed Widget (Sticky Widget) Plugin. After activating the plugin, go to Appearance » Widgets and click on the widget that you want to make sticky.
Notably, the plugin adds a Fixed Widget option in all of your widgets. Check the Fixed widget box and save changes. Go to your live site and scroll down. Your fixed widget will now be a sticky floating widget. You can read and learn more about How to Create a “Sticky” Floating Sidebar Widget in WordPress.
Summing Up,
WordPress sidebar is a theme feature that allows you to organize your content so it can attract the reader’s attention. Basically, it’s a vertical column in which you can display information other than the main content of the web page. Most often sidebars are positioned at the left or right of the content.
But, what is more, important is you can customize it to fit your needs. If you don’t know what to include in your WordPress sidebar start from widgets. As a website administrator, you can easily customize these elements in order to offer a visitor’s great user experience.
Although the website’s sidebar is one of its essential elements, have in mind it’s most often used for secondary content purposes. You can read and learn more Guide on How to Create a WordPress Sidebar.
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