Adding a sidebar to display throughout website

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  moesmomento · Member · Dec 24, 2022 at 3:29 am

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  I am trying to add a sidebar to my website that will display no matter what page you are currently on. I looked up directions and have found where to go (in appearance<customization<widgets) but all I am able to edit is a ‘footer’. Is due to a theme that I have chosen? Or how can I go about designing that.

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  staff-95percentghost · Staff · Jan 3, 2023 at 3:06 pm

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  Hi! The sidebar availability does very much depend on your theme – some themes provide sidebar spaces and some do not. Stow, the theme you have active at the moment, doesn’t have a sidebar.

  In order to use a sidebar, you’d likely want to switch themes – you could either go for a classic theme which uses Appearance > Customize > Widgets > Sidebar or you could go for a theme which is compatible with the Site Editor (reached via Appearance > Editor (beta) which becomes available when the Site Editor-compatible theme is active).

  Site Editor-compatible themes have a lot of flexibility in their layouts and you can really switch them around, but if you use one of those I’d personally suggest sticking with a right-sidebar layout so that on phone screens the sidebar situates itself nicely under your main content.

  Here are a few example themes. Dara is a classic theme with a sidebar option, it’s actually almost what Stow was based on:
  https://wordpress.com/theme/dara/thebabyandthebooks.wordpress.com

  Other classic themes with sidebars can be found here:
  https://wordpress.com/themes/thebabyandthebooks.wordpress.com?s=sidebar

  These are two Site Editor compatible themes which explicitly start off with sidebars:

  • https://wordpress.com/theme/rainfall/thebabyandthebooks.wordpress.com
  • https://wordpress.com/theme/stewart/thebabyandthebooks.wordpress.com

  However any Site Editor compatible theme has enough flexibility that you could dispense with their default layouts and set up a sidebar using a columns block.

  Other potentially useful guides:

  • Widgets https://wordpress.com/support/widgets/
  • Using the Site Editor https://en.support.wordpress.com/site-editor/