A sidebar is a widget area that allows you to show such contents as adds, social buttons, forms, featured posts, etc. on fixed locations throughout your site. But in some cases you may want to add something more special to certain posts or pages, and it’s when you need a custom sidebar. Now we will share with you how to effortlessly display a custom sidebar in your WordPress site.

Why Use a Custom Sidebar?

The sidebar is a kind of navigation structures to guide your visitors to the most interesting parts on your website. With traditional sidebars you can only show the same items on predetermined places throughout the site, and we know that there’s no need to stick in just one (boring) style.

Using a custom sidebar will bring you both functionality and aesthetic benefits. You will have more space for unusual content and implement extra features like images, a gallery, a banner, etc. on particular pages or posts. Then you also create a totally new, fantastic look for your site.

Adding a Custom Sidebar With the Easy Custom Sidebars plugin

Easy Custom Sidebar plugin is a good option for a simple and an easy-to-use custom sidebar. It is well integrated with the WordPress Customizer and has high compatibility with any theme. Following is how to add and manage a custom sidebar with Easy Custom Sidebar.

First, make sure that the Easy Custom Sidebar plugin is installed and activated in your site. For more details on how to install a WordPress plugin, see our instruction here.

Once the plugin is ready to use, go to Appearance > Theme Sidebars from your WordPress admin area to create a custom sidebar.

Select which place on your site you’d like the newly created custom sidebar to appear (Sidebar Replacement Page). You will see a list of options of posts, pages, categories, tags and more on the left side of the page.

Then, select a traditional sidebar to replace from the meta box and add a description for the custom sidebar in the box underneath (optional). Click Save Sidebar and you’ve finished the creation.

You can create as many custom sidebars as you like and assign each of them to various pages on your site. Simply click create a new sidebar and repeat the steps above.

Now it’s time to customize this new sidebar widget area. Go to Appearance > Widgets page, add widgets to your custom sidebar and configure them as per your desire. Click here for more details about WordPress widgets and how to add a widget if it’s new to you.

Easy Custom Sidebars plugin just provides very basic features of sidebar customization. If you’d like to try out more advanced features, this awesome free Custom Sidebar plugin won’t get you down.

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