Custom Sidebars Pro

The sidebar gets decided once and repeats on every page

If your theme has a single sidebar, a blog post, a service page and a category archive all show the same widgets. Whoever lands on each one is looking for something different and gets the same column. A notice meant for one section ends up in front of the whole site.

That column is space you can divide up by content, author or page type. Custom Sidebars Pro is a widget area manager: it creates as many sidebars as you need and decides which one replaces the theme sidebar in each place.

Tailored sidebars for each part of the site

• Unlimited configurations: as many sidebars with their own widgets as your site needs.
• Assignment by content: any page, post, category, post type or archive.
• Defaults: default sidebars for posts and archives, with no need to assign them one by one.
• Author sidebars: a different column for each person who writes on the site.
• Clone and sync: copy widget settings to edit complex configurations faster.
• Import and export: back up your sidebars or move them to another site.

Everything runs from the WordPress Widgets menu, with no new items added to the dashboard menu.

The same widget, visible only to those who should see it

Besides swapping the whole sidebar, you can act on a single widget. Each one accepts its own visibility rules:

• Guests: to tell apart people who visit without logging in.
• User role: a widget for some roles and not for others.
• Post type: limited to the types you choose.
• Special pages or categories: to narrow it down to those sections.

That way, a small change does not force you to duplicate a whole sidebar: if only one widget varies, its rule is enough.

Your site must meet three conditions

The plugin depends on how the rest of the installation is built:

• Classic widgets screen: it works only with that screen. On current versions of WordPress you need the Classic Widgets plugin or must enable that interface yourself.
• Widget areas in the theme: without them there is nothing to replace.
• A wp_head() call in the theme: the replacement happens inside that function.

With that in place, setup follows this order:

1. Create your sidebars on the Widgets screen and fill them with content.
2. In the Custom Sidebars settings, mark which theme sidebars can be replaced.
3. Assign a sidebar from the edit screen of each piece of content, or set defaults for posts and archives.
4. Check the public site to confirm the right sidebar appears.

It replaces existing areas, it does not create new layouts

Custom Sidebars works on the areas your theme already registers. It changes which widgets appear in them, so a theme without widget areas gives it nothing to replace. Its features do not include settings for the width or position of the sidebar.

Everything described here is also in the free edition; the difference is that the free one includes ads.

If your site no longer works with classic widgets

Anyone building with blocks or with Elementor has other routes in the catalog:

• Extended Widget Options: adds visibility controls by page, device and role to both classic widgets and Gutenberg blocks.
• HT Builder Pro: brings the design of the blog, header and footer into Elementor, with individual templates per category and per tag.

Notices and roadblocks on activation

What does "There are no replaceable sidebars selected" mean?

You have not yet marked any theme sidebar as replaceable. Do it in the Custom Sidebars settings.

Why is the Widgets menu missing?

Your theme most likely does not have widget areas enabled, and the plugin needs them.

I see the sidebars in the dashboard but not on the site. What should I check?

Make sure the theme calls wp_head(), because the replacement happens inside that function.

Can an editor create sidebars?

Creating them requires the switch_themes capability, the same one that manages widgets. To grant it to another role, use a role plugin such as User Role Editor.

Does it work with the block-based widgets screen?

No. It needs the classic screen, which you can restore with the Classic Widgets plugin.