Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 12: Customizing Your Blog's Sidebar

16 May 2009

Build-A-Blog Workshop Day 12: Customizing Your Blog's Sidebar

Author: Jim | Filed under: 30-Day Blogging

Now that we have our logo and header in place, let’s start working on the layout of our website. We’ll start with the sidebar today, and work our way down.

Whether you have a 2 or a 3 column website, there should always be room for things like widgets and advertisements along the sides of your theme. At theNetFool.com, I have a simple 2-column design with a right-hand sidebar. The same holds true at Jimvesting.com, so I am going off of the same design thesis.

Two Parts of the Sidebar

When I think of the sidebar of my blogs, I normally consider two different areas, the first “block,” and everything else. Essentially, when you have some kind of sidebar (or bars if you are using a 3-column design ), we are going to put more emphasis on the top-fold regions. What is this “top fold?” When you load up a website, what can you see without scrolling? Everything that you can see is known as “top of the fold,” with all the remaining material being below the fold. Naturally, your most valuable real estate is “above the fold.” So this is where we want to put the things we need highlighted.

Sample Sidebar Placements:

Above-the-Fold Sidebar: Expensive advertisement blocks, newsletter subscriptions, RSS feed subscriptions, social media icons, highly-relevant material
Below-the-Fold Sidebar: Top commentators, editor’s pick articles, donation buttons, inexpensive advertisements, calendars, basic widgets

Modifying the Sidebar

Now that we have a basic idea of what we want to go where, it is important to know where to look in order to change things up to our liking. This will vary by blog theme, but should normally be in one of two places within your WordPress Administrator’s panel. If your theme is fully-widgetized, than you need only control and modify your settings in the “Widgets” section underneath the “Appearance” tab on your admin panel. Otherwise, though your blog more than likely still has widgets active, you will need to check out the hard coding by going to “Editor” in the “Appearance” section, finding your theme and entering into the “sidebar.php” file for modifications.

Normally I would suggest changing the top of your sidebar to include some kind of RSS-subscription area, or a block where you can subscribe to your newsletter. Basically, the idea of having a fast-access to getting your readers to lock into your blog is the way to go. Don’t like this? Then by all means put an advertising block or two in this region and capitalize on the high-clickthrough placement.

-Jimvesting