Transform Your WordPress Sidebar in 10 Minutes

As functional as it may be, your WordPress site’s sidebar is also one of the most important of the entire site. But if you were to be honest, chances are you haven’t really given a great deal of thought to your sidebar at all as of late…if ever.Sidebars serve a variety of helpful purposes for the average WordPress site. They streamline navigation, they inject variety into the mix and they can also be used to bring a strong visual dynamic to the page as a whole. In fact, the way sidebars are used can make a massive difference to how the site is interpreted by its visitors.  The Basic RulesAs for what makes for a successful sidebar, it largely comes down to the type, style and purpose of the website. Nevertheless, there are certain universal rules that should be followed in all instances, which include the following:

• Simplicity sells and there’s usually very little gain by including sidebars that are too long, wide or complicated. As long as they do their job properly, feel free to keep things minimal.
• Know what you want and make it happen. Long story short, you need to think about what it is you want your sidebar to accomplish and then focus on this. Mailing list signups? Instant conversions? Links to other pages? Know what you want and go for it.
• Sidebars also tend to be the ideal places to place things like social media buttons and contact details, in order to make it easy for your visitors to get in touch and spread the word.

Improving Your Sidebar In An Instant…AlmostThe beauty of WordPress is of course that it offers huge scope for customisation of pretty much everything – sidebars included. And the really good news is that the sidebar is also one of the easiest features to tweak and toy with.Before getting started however, take a screenshot of your current sidebar, just to keep handy for comparison purposes along the way.Step 1 – Declutter First of all, when you set up a sidebar in WordPress it will almost certainly feature quite a lot of information and elements you don’t really need. As is the case with most website content these days, less can most certainly be more and there really is no place for clutter. Which is why the first step in the process should be to can the clutter, once and for all.It’s simply a case of hitting the Dashboard, going into Appearance and from there selecting Widgets. Check out the widgets that are currently in your sidebar and get rid of literally everything that isn’t serving a valid purpose.Step 2 – Better Widgets Now that you have some space to play with, you might want to think about installing some better widgets to both add depth to your site and enhance the user experience. For example, if you would like for your latest Twitter posts to show up in your sidebar, there’s Twitter timeline widget for that. There are also loads of widgets for newsfeeds, displaying images and video clips – pretty much anything you could possibly need.Take a look through the plugin directory for a few quality widgets and bring your sidebar to life like never before.Step 3 – Check Installed WidgetsThere are plenty of plugins that come with widgets pre-packaged in with them as standard – Jetpack and MailChimp being two prime examples. You won’t find these widgets separated in the directory – they come with the plugins as part of the package.So it’s a good idea to check out the widgets you already have access to by going to (Appearance > Widgets). You may find that there are some in there you didn’t even know you had.