How to Create Multiple Sidebars for BuddyPress – No Template Edits Required!

Registering and adding new sidebars to a BuddyPress site can be quite a task, involving edits and additions to several template files.

BuddyPress Sidebar is the newest plugin on the scene, and it makes the creation of multiple sidebars a snap! If manually editing BuddyPress files is beyond your skill level, then prior to this plugin you may have been stuck with a single sidebar. Now you can install BuddyPress Sidebar and with a couple clicks you’ll be able to have unique, widgetized sidebars for each of your BuddyPress components.

For example, if you want to place a featured members widget on the members page only, you’ll have that option. Assign related posts widgets to the home page and show featured groups on the groups directory. There’s all kinds of widgets available for BuddyPress, but you can’t fit them all in one long sidebar, nor would you want to. It makes much more sense to strategically place them in the sidebars of pages related to the type of information you’re showing. Score one for the non-programmer!

BuddyPress Sidebar improves the content flow and layout of your community.

• Sell more ads, uniquely suited to pages where they appear.
• Promote Groups and Featured Members on pages relevant to these components.
• Create more space for widgets offered with additional BP plugins such as Achievements, bbPress forums, Events, etc.
• Keep blog post and subscription-related widgets on the blog pages.

How to Use BuddyPress Sidebar

Non-programmers will love how simple this is. Install and activate BuddyPress Sidebar. Then go to Dashboard >> BuddyPress >> BP Sidebar. List the components where you want a unique sidebar and click save. Now visit your widgets section and you’ll see several more widgetized areas that you can drag and drop into. Customizing your BuddyPress template has never been so easy!

Note: Although this plugin has not been updated for quite some time, we tested it as recently as January 2020 and the plugin seemed to work fine (make sure you’re using a theme that supports custom widgets.) For a more recent plugin that is currently being supported, check out Content Aware Sidebars – Unlimited Widget Areas.

Tags:

• advertising
• sidebars