Putting sidebar widgets on static homepage
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I have just set up a home page for my blog @ http://katewebb.wordpress.com because I have a lot of information about pages in my sidebar and I didn’t want readers to have to scroll all the way down – but hoped I could put all this horizontically rather than vertically so it could be seen at a glance on my home page. Can anyone tell me if this is possible and how to put the sidebar widgets onto my home page. Thanks.
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Widgets cannot be put into the body of pages, just in the sidebars.
It might be possible to run the sidebar horizontally – if you were near Guru level with CSS – but it would apply to all pages on the blog, not just to the home page.
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In the other thread, you essentially found the answer to your question was a text widget. Now you want to put the contents of the text widget in a web page. This is the LONG WAY AROUND.
The contents of a text widget are just whatever you type into it. Just type it into a static Page instead.
Or just switch to a theme with a tabbed header, which lists Pages in different tabs automatically.
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Thanks. Not sure what Guru level is but I’m at Idiot level I’m afraid. So will just go back to non-static presentation unless someone can tell me how to put the side bar information into a static home page that can be read at a glance rather than having to scroll down.
This seems like a fairly obvious request, not sure why it can’t be accommodated. Surely there are examples out there of people with blogs that include all the ‘inside’ information on their home page?
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I have almost 4000 posts. How would anyone with any meaningful level of content put EVERYTHING on the front page of their blogs?
What exact information do you want to convey on your front page? Be as specific as possible and maybe we can figure something out for you.
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Thanks for your patience, like I said, I’m an idiot at this. What I want is for all the items separated by widgets in my long sidebar, which at the moment you have to scroll down in order to be able to see, to be easily seen at one glance, ie without scrolling down, on a front/home page.
So on my blog, the sidebar has headings with listed items below – In Here, Print, Category, Topic, Angela Carter, Christina Stead, Out There – these are my titles for all the content on the blog – posts, pages, links, cloud, catergories, etc. I want all this to be viewable in on shot on my home page. I hope this is clear. Thanks again.
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I sure hope another volunteer can fathom the what and the why of this, because I sincerely do not understand what you want to do and why you want to do it.
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I have to say:
1) this is not possible, because once you have any meaningful amount of information, the font would have to be so small nobody could read it
2) it is not desired by readers, who like to come to blogs to read things, not be confronted with a menu as long as they are tall.
This is exactly why sidebars were invented: so people could post interesting things to read and see, while still providing paths to all the other content. If you really need that much navigation, use Fjords theme, which has three sidebars.
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This is a classic beginner’s mistake, where you’re getting way too caught up in the formatting. Trust me, every theme on WP.com except Monotone is absolutely optimized for navigation and information flow. The professionals have done a good job at designing things here.
The MOST important thing is for you to get blogging. Post things. As often as possible. Use all normal navigational widgets in your sidebar, and the views will come. Do not try to reinvent the wheel, especially if you’re a newbie.
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This is a classic beginner’s mistake, where you’re getting way too caught up in the formatting. Trust me, every theme on WP.com except Monotone is absolutely optimized for navigation and information flow. The professionals have done a good job at designing things here.
The MOST important thing is for you to get blogging. Post things. As often as possible. Use all normal navigational widgets in your sidebar, and the views will come. Do not try to reinvent the wheel, especially if you’re a newbie.
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Not making myself clear. I don’t want to include the whole posts/pages on the home page just let people know that they are there – which is what the sidebar does if someone scrolls down. I don’t want them to have to scroll down, just get the information in the sidebar on the home page.
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I understand you perfectly. What I said stands. Use the Pages, Recent Posts, Archives, Category (and Tag if you use tags) widgets in your sidebar. Then just go blog.
There is NO WAY to get all of that information in one view without scrolling down, and if there were it would be too much.
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Bottom line: Can’t be done unless you manually list all that stuff yourself in the body of your static page and then manually update that page each and every time you create new content or make a change.
Also having widgets only on the main page of your blog would absolutely ensure that the search engines would pay little to no attention to your blog and it will be very difficult indeed for you to pull yourself up very high in search results. Search engines simply do not like static main pages on sites, which is why so many sites with flash-based main pages have such a hard time getting decent search engine ranking.
Search engines pay attention to content, not to widgets. Widget do nothing to get your blog noticed by search engines.
And quite truthfully, I absolutely hate static main pages with only lists of posts or categories or tags. It flies in the face of good web design. It makes your visitors have to stop and think, and that is simply not a good thing. You want the entire site to be completely self-evident and do not want your visitors to stop and have to analyze a whole bunch of lists to see where they want to go. It is a sure way to get them to click away from your site.
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Also, the minute you have any meaningful number of posts etc, you have to scroll down anyway, just as if it were in the sidebar.
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Okay. I give in. Thanks for all the advice – and patience – to this neophyte. I’ll go back to a non-static home page. Over and out.
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I understand what Katewebb is asking, I have a similar prolem.
In order to see the sidebar, users have to scroll to the bottom
of the page. Is it possible to keep the sidebar at the top
of the blog, next to my most recent post? -
Can you link your category links to an image on a static page. So category 1 = image 1, category 2 = image 2 and when readers click on the image they will be taken to the link in that category.
But you would have to have very few categories to make it visually appealing and easy for readers to figure out so your images would have to have a name captioned on it somewhere.
As long as you dont have a page full of complicated detailed images it could be easy enough for readers.
Is that possible? It worked for my pages in my sidebar I was thinking it could work on a static page too.
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Yes, it’s perfectly possible. I’ve got just over 200 categories, but if you look at http://wordpress.com you’ll see how it would look with a drastically smaller number.
But most readers prefer to have a choice how to browse, and categories are NOT their first choice.
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conceptiscurrency, keep your images smaller. They’re too wide, pushing your sidebar down. Keep them at least ten pixels smaller than the column they’re in.
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