WooSidebars

WooSidebars icon
WooSidebars is a WordPress plugin that enables users to create and manage custom sidebars and replace existing sidebars on any widgetized area of their WordPress site.
What We Think:
78%
Recommended!

WooSidebars: A Comprehensive Review

WooSidebars is a powerful WordPress plugin which allows website owners to customize their WordPress websites in a quick and easy way. With the help of WooSidebars, you can create multiple custom sidebars, associate them with various pages & posts, and choose which custom sidebar appears on each individual page or post of your website. Creating a custom sidebar is a great way to add site-specific content like recent blog posts, categories, tags, or featured images elsewhere on your website. You can also add any kind of content to your custom sidebar, such as recent products, Google Adsense ads, and social media sharing buttons.

WooSidebars: Breakdown

The list of custom widget areas.

WooSidebars is an incredibly useful plugin for website owners who want to have better control over the content that appears on their site. This plugin is incredibly easy to use and can help you customize the sidebar of your website in a few simple steps. To create a custom sidebar, all you need to do is navigate to the plugin’s settings page and click on the “Add New Sidebar” button. From there, you can easily name your custom sidebar and add the relevant content to it. Once you’ve created a custom sidebar, you can associate it with various pages and posts on your website. This means that any time someone visits one of those pages or posts, the custom sidebar you’ve created will automatically appear.

WooSidebars also offers plenty of features which can help make your website more dynamic and engaging. This plugin supports shortcodes and widget areas, which means you can add any kind of content to your custom sidebar. You can include audio players, countdown timers, Google Adsense ads, and much more. Furthermore, you can even include social media sharing buttons, which will allow your readers to easily share your content through their social media accounts. The plugin also supports internationalization, so you can create multiple custom sidebars in different languages.

Finally, WooSidebars is incredibly secure, as it has been tested and certified for security by the WordPress Plugin Directory. This ensures that your website will remain safe and secure, even if you’re using the plugin.

Pros of Using WooSidebars

Better Layout Flexibiltiy: The WooSidebars plugin allows you to add different sidebar layouts for different pages, posts or categories, something not possible with a standard WordPress sidebar. You can use the same sidebar, or mix and match sidebars for different page types, or create custom sidebars for specific situations. That way, you have more control over the design with a sidebar layout tailored to a specific situation.

More Options for Widgets: The WooSidebars plugin provides more options for widgets. It allows you toDetermine if a widget should appear on a page, post or category page, or on specific post type or taxonomy archive pages. You can also choose where to place the widget, either in the primary or secondary sidebar, and determine the order in which the widgets appear.

Widget Shortcodes and Widgets Displayed by Conditionals: WooSidebars gives you the ability to use shortcodes to display widgets inside the page content, as well as the traditional sidebars. This is especially useful for pages or posts where a widget is as an integral part of the page content. The conditional tags feature of this plugin also lets you display or hide widgets based on conditions like user roles or posts and page IDs.

Responsive Sidebars: WooSidebars is fully responsive and works well with any device and screen width. It allows you to easily set different sidebars for desktop, tablet and mobile devices. That means you can adjust the sidebar to the size of the screen for optimal viewing and usability.

Widget Visibility: Another advanced feature of this plugin is the ability to make sidebars visible to certain user roles only, which is very handy if you need to limit the access to certain widgets or pages. You can choose to display widgets only to logged in users, or restrict them to specific user roles or user capabilities.

Cons of Using WooSidebars

Incompatibility with Other Plugins: Depending on the other plugins you have installed and activated on your site, you may find that WooSidebars is incompatible with some of them. This can lead to broken features or functionality when using both of these plugins. This can result in a great frustration for users, as it may take time to track down the issue and fix it.

Increased Page Loading Time: The WooSidebars plugin works by loading its own sidebars to replace the default sidebars. Due to the extra amount of code and data that needs to be processed, pages can take a longer time to load when compared to sites with no sidebars. This can cause a slowdown in performance, leading to longer load times and a frustrating user experience.

Can be Difficult to Customize: WooSidebars can be difficult to customize without the proper knowledge. It comes pre-loaded with a few sidebar areas, but requires additional HTML, CSS, and PHP coding skills to customize them and create additional sidebar areas. If you do not possess strong coding skills, it will be difficult to make customizations to your sidebars.

May Clutter Your Site: WooSidebars can quickly end up cluttering your website with too many custom sidebar areas. If you are not careful with the sidebars you create editing existing ones this can end up causing your website’s page layout to become disorganized and broken. Taking a minimalist approach when setting up sidebars can help you avoid clutter buildup and maintain a clean look to your site.

High Risk for Security Breaches: The WooSidebars plugin runs code customizations on your WordPress site. Any time you introduce an additional outside source of code you inherently increase your risk for security breaches. Not following secure coding practices can leave you vulnerable to security threats such as cross-site scripting and other forms of malicious coding.

78% Recommended!

In conclusion

WooSidebars is an incredibly useful WordPress plugin for website owners who want to have better control over the content that appears on their website. This plugin is incredibly easy to use and can help you customize the sidebar of your website in a few simple steps. From creating multiple custom sidebars to adding any kind of content to them, WooSidebars provides everything you need to make your website stand out from the crowd. Furthermore, the plugin is incredibly secure and has been tested and certified by the WordPress Plugin Directory for security. So, if you’re looking for a way to make your website more dynamic and engaging, WooSidebars is definitely worth considering.

Plugin Specifications
  • Version: 1.4.6
  • Last Updated: 3 years ago
  • Installs: 200,000+
  • WP Version: 4.1+
  • Tested Until: 5.8.8
  • PHP Version: N/A
Use Case Examples
  • Create Unique Widgets Areas
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    WooSidebars allows users to create unique widget areas which can be added to any WordPress page. This allows for increased customizability and flexibility when designing the layout of a particular website. With WooSidebars, the ability to drag and drop widgets into the areas is a powerful feature that gives users complete control over their site's content. Furthermore, users can assign certain widgets within the widget area to appear on certain pages, or set them to only appear once, giving tremendous flexibility when creating various layouts.
  • Integrate with Sidebar Manager
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  • Full Browser Compatibility
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  • Flexible Widget Support
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  • Customize Sidebar Elements
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Tags
  • sidebars
  • widget areas
  • widgets