Description

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.

Benefits

No more site-wide, generic sidebars. Each page (or section) can have its own widgets.
Complete control over the names of your custom sidebars.
Assign the same sidebar to multiple pages.
Modify a page’s sidebar without creating an unnecessary revision.

Advanced Usage

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' );

Additional Resources

Notes

Custom Loops

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.

Theme Sidebars

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.

Screenshots

Simply create a new sidebar when editing a page.
The new sidebar shows up on the widget panel. Notice the new "Widget Area" widget for including other widget areas.
Bulk edit in action. Easily assign a sidebar to multiple pages. (Quick edit works, too!)

Installation

Installing Simple Page Sidebars is just like installing most other plugins. Check out the codex if you have any questions.

Setup

After installation, go to the Reading options panel (the Reading link under Settings) and choose which of your registered sidebars is the default sidebar.

FAQ

Why is the default sidebar still showing after I’ve created a custom sidebar for a page?

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.

How do I give my blog a different sidebar?

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.

Can I hide the “Sidebar” column on the Pages screen in the admin panel?

Yes, just click the “Screen Options” tab in the upper right corner of your screen and uncheck the “Sidebar” option.

Reviews

nevertrump January 8, 2021

Update: Wrote to the developer, he answered quickly. The issue we are seeing appears not to be with Simple Page Sidebars but rather with WordPress 5.6 Core instead. See the ticket where others are having the same issue. https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/52073 Absolutely awesome plugin up to 5.5.3. Unfortunately, it no longer works with the latest version of WordPress as of this review (5.6) on 1/8/2021. Hopefully, the developer(s) will have time to upgrade the plugin. In the meantime, those who want to continue to use the plugin will need to downgrade their website to an earlier version. You can use a free plugin called WP Downgrade to do this but it's a bandaid.

messanoir April 27, 2019

Just wanted to say, that even though the developer is super busy and may not have updated the plugin version specifically for latest WP version, it still works flawlessly. This is a great example of simple coding done right. Nothing that isn't needed, it just simply works. 🙂

Patty J. Ayers February 16, 2018

This is simple and works great, and no ads! Thank you! Other sidebar plugins put huge, ugly ads right in the middle of the Widgets screen (Custom Sidebars by WPMU-Dev).

hijack61 September 12, 2017

thanks guys for hard work, excellent plugin, works like a charme

y2kdaddio June 16, 2017

I can't find a way to ask a question so I will ask it here. Simple sidebars is awesome...until yesterday when it stopped working for me. Running WordPress 4.8. Added a new webpage, entered a new sidebar name and hit update. Added text to the new sidebar and updated. Here's the rub. When I try to edit the text for this particular sidebar, it returns me to the Widget Text page. I'm caught in an endless loop. This now occurs with all the sidebars that I have created. I'm stumped...can anyone help? Sorry to put this in the reviews but I found no way to post in the support form.

deeholzman March 15, 2017

Very easy to configure and set up - you can rename sidebars, and this plugin also allows as many widget areas as you want. You can create new widget areas with each sidebar that you want, and put those sidebar widgets on whatever pages that you want. Here's how to rename a sidebar: Go to 'All Pages', and find the row one of the pages that uses the sidebar you want to change the name of, then look in that row’s “sidebar” column. There you’ll see the name of the sidebar; select that sidebar link and it will take you to an Edit Sidebar page where you can change the title. To delete a sidebar: Just remove it from any page that it has been assigned to. Very handy plugin and saves lots of time from having to register sidebars in functions.php.

Read all 54 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Simple Page Sidebars” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

“Simple Page Sidebars” has been translated into 5 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Simple Page Sidebars” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

1.2.1 – July 27, 2018

Removed bundled language files in favor of WordPress.org language packs.

1.2.0

Transferred to Cedaro.
Updated the Widget Area class constructor to prevent deprecation notices in WP 4.3+.

1.1.8

Added Spanish translation.

1.1.7

Added Indonesian translation.

1.1.6

Prevent quick edit nonces from being submitted when searching or filtering a post list table.

1.1.5

Added Serbo-Croatian translation.

1.1.4

Really fix the Quick Edit functionality.
Update text domain loading order to get ready for language packs.
Fix a strict PHP notice.

1.1.3

Fixed Quick Edit functionality in WordPress 3.6.

1.1.2

Changed the parent file of the “Edit Sidebar” screen to remove the small gap between submenu items.

1.1.1

Worked around the slashing weirdness in WordPress API.
Implemented a method to allow developers to easily add support for additional post types. No plans to build this out further, it’s just here for additional flexibility if more complex solutions aren’t wanted.
Added a filter to disable the edit link in the custom Sidebar column (simple_page_sidebars_show_edit_link_in_column).

1.1

Added an Edit Sidebar screen for updating a sidebar name and associated pages.
Added an update message when a sidebar is saved on the Add/Edit Page screen.
Made the sidebar column sortable on the All Pages screen.
Refactored the codebase (formatting, improved comments, static classes, organization, etc).
Added better feedback throughout the dashboard when something goes wrong.
Saved spinner image to plugin folder due to updates coming in 3.5.
Removed deprecated filters.

1.0.1

Fixed bug causing issues with other plugins that don’t submit the sidebar nonce on the All Pages screen.

1.0

Modified check for blog page.

0.2.1

Now works for the blog page when it’s set in the Reading Settings.
Bug fixes.

0.2

Added an option to define the default sidebar on the Reading options panel.
Removed the template change requirement. It’s no longer recommended.
Refactored code, including function/hook names.
Deprecated simple_sidebar function. Replaced by simple_page_sidebar.
Deprecated simpsid_widget_areas filter. Replaced by simple_page_sidebars_widget_areas.
Deprecated simpsid_widget_area_defaults filter. Replaced by simple_page_sidebars_widget_area_defaults.
Deprecated simpsid_sidebar_name filter. Replaced with simple_page_sidebars_last_call.

0.1

Initial release.

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