Ben Byrne

kenjigarland

Xavier Serrano

<p>Anything you can do with a widget can now be done inside your menus!</p>
<p>Widget Menuizer makes WordPress menus even more powerful, allowing for easy creation of custom “mega menus” and other fanciness without completely overhauling the menu management system into something unrecognizable.</p>
<p>Upon activation, navigate to the menu management screen under <em>Appearance > Menus</em>, and you’ll find a new option for <em>Sidebars</em> under the familiar Pages, Posts, Links, Categories and Tags list. Here, you can view all the sidebar regions that exist in your currently-active theme. Simply check a box to add a sidebar into your menu the same way you would for any other menu item.</p>
<p>Once in your menu, you’ll see a new option for “Container Element,” which specifies which HTML tag is wrapped around the sidebars that are output into the menu.</p>
<p>While running Widget Menuizer you also get the ability to define new sidebar regions right from the <em>Appearance > Widgets</em> admin screen (when using WordPress prior to 5.8, or 5.8 in conjection with the Classic Widgets plugin), so you can easily create new regions just for including in your menus without having to write any custom code for your theme.</p>
<p>Note for users of WordPress 5.8 and above: This plugin still works for injecting regions into menus, but you need to run the “Classic Widgets” plugin in order to create new Widget Areas via the admin.</p>
<p><strong>Important:</strong> Because it’s possible to put menu widgets inside sidebars, you may see a warning notice if the sidebar region you’ve put in your menu contains a menu widget. This is because you may have inadvertently created a recursion: if the menu contained in your sidebar is the same menu your sidebar is placed in, you’ll have an infinite loop that will do bad, bad things. So be careful.</p>
<p><strong>New in 1.0</strong> Widget Menuizer now gives site administrators the ability to control the direction widgets flow within the menu, either horizontally or vertically.</p>
<p><strong>New in 0.6:</strong> Widget Menuizer now provides a way for site administrators to create new Sidebars on the fly from the Widget admin! Now you can create new sidebars for use in your menus without having to edit your theme files or use some other plugin to let you register new sidebars.</p>


Widget Menuizer

Unlock the full potential of the WordPress menu system to create mega menus and more by adding sidebar regions and widgets to your menus.

Brady Vercher

Cedaro

<p>Designed for simplicity and flexibility, Simple Page Sidebars gives WordPress users, designers, and developers the ability to assign custom sidebars to individual pages–without making any template changes. Existing sidebars can also be assigned in quick edit and bulk edit modes, helping save you time.</p>
<p>In contrast to some of the more complicated plugins available, Simple Page Sidebars aims for basic, core-like functionality and integration that’s easy to use without polluting your admin panel. And due to the way sidebars are saved, it utilizes built-in WordPress caching, so your site won’t be bogged down with additional queries.</p>
<p>Simple Page Sidebars also ships with a “Widget Area” widget for pulling all the widgets from one sidebar into another.</p>
<h3>Benefits</h3>
<ul>
<li>No more site-wide, generic sidebars. Each page (or section) can have its own widgets.</li>
<li>Complete control over the names of your custom sidebars.</li>
<li>Assign the same sidebar to multiple pages.</li>
<li>Modify a page’s sidebar without creating an unnecessary revision.</li>
</ul>
<h3>Advanced Usage</h3>
<p>If you want to assign custom sidebars to archive pages or replace multiple sidebars per page, this plugin likely won’t be the best solution. However it’s flexible enough to handle a wide range of page-based use cases. It can even be configured to work with Custom Post Types by adding a couple lines of code:</p>
<pre><code>function myprefix_init() {
    add_post_type_support( '{{post_type}}', 'simple-page-sidebars' );
}
add_action( 'init', 'myprefix_init' );
</code></pre>
<h3>Additional Resources</h3>
<ul>
<li><a href="https://wordpress.org/support/view/plugin-reviews/simple-page-sidebars#postform" rel="ugc">Write a review</a></li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/cedaro/simple-page-sidebars" rel="nofollow ugc">Contribute on GitHub</a></li>
<li><a href="https://twitter.com/cedaroco" rel="nofollow ugc">Follow @cedaroco</a></li>
<li><a href="https://www.cedaro.com/?utm_source=wordpress.org&utm_medium=link&utm_content=simple-page-sidebars-readme&utm_campaign=plugins" rel="nofollow ugc">Visit Cedaro</a></li>
</ul>
<h3>Notes</h3>
<h3>Custom Loops</h3>
<p>If your page has any custom loops or queries, they need to be followed by <code>wp_reset_query()</code>, otherwise the global <code>$post</code> variable will no longer reference the correct post and by the time the sidebar is displayed, Simple Page Sidebars won’t know which page is being viewed, possibly leading to an unexpected sidebar being displayed.</p>
<h3>Theme Sidebars</h3>
<p>Some themes register different sidebars for their page templates, which means there isn’t a default sidebar that can be replaced. To use Simple Page Sidebars in this instance, you can create a child theme and force page templates with custom sidebars to use the default sidebar.</p>


Simple Page Sidebars

Initially I was disappointing it didn't work on custom post types, but then bothered to read the instructions.
The developer had bothered to put down exactly how to do this:
function myprefix_init() {
    add_post_type_support( '{{post_type}}', 'simple-page-sidebars' );
}
add_action( 'init', 'myprefix_init' );
Works a treat! Very flexible. Great job.



Works great

Easy to understand how to use it and does exactly what it says. Great plugin.



Works great!

Easily assign custom, widget-enabled sidebars to any page.

Widget Menuizer vs Simple Page Sidebars