Add sidebar tabs to your WordPress blog in 2 minutes!
If you were following through my latest makeover of ROCKFUSE, you would have found out that I’ve added a Sidebar Widget with Tabs to display my latest, popular and randomly selected posts. Sidebar Tabs have many advantages to it.
Why Sidebar Tabs?
First, they save a lot of real estate - Oh yes they do! Just imagine; If I had to display all those posts I’ve in those side bar tabs it would have taken the whole left sidebar, right to the very bottom. But instead with sidebars, I’m able to save 75% of the space needed to hold the posts.
Do you want to show off more from less? Before I started using tabs, I had no real way of displaying my recent posts and the most popular posts at the same time. Why? It would make my sidebar look unnecessarily cluttered. But, not anymore! I strongly feel that I should display my recent posts since they contain the most relevant tips for today, and most popular posts, because they are the most popular! So, thanks to sidebar tabs, I’m in full swing.
Effectively, Increase you page views! Well, this is really a derived benefit from the earlier point. When you show off more, it is evident that your visitors will check out more of it. It’s just a bonus of being able to harness more from less.
How can I put them in my blog?
Well, there are a few plugins for WordPress. If I had to choose between two, I’d probably use either one from Accordion or Fun with Sidebar Tabs. (I know of no way to replicate this for blogger blogs. And I highly doubt whether it’s even possible - but if you know, please enlighten us?)
However, Fun with Sidebar Tabs is relatively easier to configure and customize. So, in this tutorial, I will walk you through the minimal steps of setting it up.
- Download, Install and Activate the plugin if you already haven’t.
- Then check out your widget section of your WordPress admin control panel.
- In the list of the sidebars available, select “Tabbed Sidebar 1″.
- Add the widgets that you want to be shown as tabs to the “Tabbed Sidebar 1″. Save the changes.
- Go to your default sidebar section.
- You would be able to see a new widget called “Tabbed Sidebar 1″ there. Add it where you want within the sidebar. Save Changes.
That’s it. You’re good to go. There’s really nothing to it.
The wonder of this plugin is that it sets you configure your tabbed widget as a specific sidebar. This makes updating it relatively simple and much more easier than other plugins like Accordion. So if you thought you must pay a professional coder to get a Ajax Sidebar Tabbed Widget done, think again!
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i was looking for this exact plugging all over the internet.Thanks to kotthu,i found this great site.And glad to see a nice looking srilankan blog finally.
This plugin will definitely be in my blog .Thanks for the share,
Eranda.
Thank you for your kind words Eranda.
just installed it,but when i tried to add it to my left side bar all other content which was previously there was gone,
And when I removed it,everything came back to normal.
I know i am doing something wrong,or may be something wrong with my theme,
Anyway i need to optimize my blog since all the work so far has done by me without any tech knowledge.Can you recommend someone in colombo who can do this,
I am ready to spend some cash
Meh.. I fear it to be a conflict with another plugin. The best thing is to disable all your widgets plugins first and see.. Then activate one by one. You can always seek support from the plugins home page.
Love the idea! I’ve seen it done right on quite a few blogs already. A blog network, actually, where the blog would display the popular posts in the other blogs in the network.
Thanks for sharing!
You’re welcome. It’s a pretty cool idea alright.
With Wp-SuperCache turned on, I don’t think this widget will be useful in my blog *sigh*..it’s a good one
(with caching, you can’t grab/update number of reads, visits, etc of your posts - since no PHP is executed)
So that means you have no way of displaying popular posts either right?
Thanks a lot, I’m going to check this out now….
Reply to JulianSide bar tabs are a great way to increase your page views and most themes comes with them pre installed now. If you are a blogspot user there are ways to add them to the blog if you have a bit of technical knowledge.If now you can use a template with them pre installed as well. One great place to look for them is eblogtemplates.com
Thanks Nishadha. I’ll check this out. But strongly suspect the use of Ajax in them.
That is really cool! At first I was really overwhelmed by EVERYTHING on your blog because I was looking for the entrecard to drop on, but then I saw this post and had to read more. I am going to check that out as it looks pretty cool and the less cluttered sidebars are the better! That feature seems to be more and more popular as I am seeing it incorporated more often in wordpress themes - a widget makes life a lot more flexible!
True! That’s probably one of the best things about this!
Thanks for sharing this. I have been diserious of having something like this for another blog of mine. I have something similar in my current theme, but I couldn’t figure out how it was put up and I have been having a touch time modifying the theme. Nice of you to share this.
Thanks for sharing! I also haven’t been displaying my recent and popular posts in the sidebar because of the space issue, and now I can! ^_^
Thanks for the tip, but when I tried to apply it, all widgets I added are showing underneath easchother?
Meh, this is caused by the JavaScript libraries not loading. You have enabled JavaScript in your browser?
Yes, I have
Really snazzy plugin, but on your blog they are hardly visible!!! Trust me, I had a look at the whole site before looking at the post image…then noticed popular and then got it!!! You need to make it more visible