WOO Sidebars

Use the Page Templates conditional filters to use the themes page templates (e.g. Sitemap, Feedback, Contact, etc.).

WOO Sidebars, which is a WOO Dojo add-on module, allows you to create something even bigger than widgets, it lets you create Widget Areas which then let you put widgets into those areas and choose when and where they show up.

We recently looked at WordPress Jetpack’s Widget Visibility module. That module lets you designate, per widget, when it shows up. WOO Sidebars can do that–and more. It lets you show sets/groups/collections of widgets where you’d like. But it doesn’t stop there. Whereas the Widget Visibility module let you choose between a few options (pages, categories, etc.), but WOO sidebars gives you even more control over where those widget areas go.

In WOO Sidebars, you can choose to show the widget areas using all of the following conditions:

• Pages
• Page Templates
• Post Types
• Taxonomy Archives: e.g. categories, tags, format (post format) etc.
• Taxonomy Terms: e.g. categories, tags, slide pages, portfolio galleries, etc.
• Template Hierarchy: e.g. pages, search results, front page, single entries, date archives, etc.

Whoa, what are half of those? If you don’t know, you don’t need to worry about them. But you can rest assured that if you want to show a particular set of widgets in a certain area, you probably can.

Does your site have a ton of content?

If your site is content heavy and you have a million pages, a zillion categories and a billion posts, you can use WOO Sidebars to show different widgets in many different areas. But just a word of warning: it can get hairy. Yes, it will work, yes, the conditions will follow what you tell them to do, but chances are that you will lose track of what is supposed to go where and when and it gets out of hand. Keep it simple, let it grow slowly and keep track of how it’s working. If you need that custom sidebar on the special landing page, excellent, do it. But use this powerful tool slowly and understand what it does before you go creating too many widget areas and you need a spreadsheet to figure out which contact information is supposed to go on the secondary staff pages.

Put sidebar widgets where you want when you want.

Want even more customization? Careful what you wish for! WOO Sidebars will let you go nuts with where you can place your special widget areas. It can get a bit overwhelming, just use what you need at first and dig deeper if you need it.