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Which Sidebar Widgets to Use in Your WordPress Site

Filed Under: WordPress Setup June 7, 2013

One of the main ways for your visitor to navigate through your website is the Sidebar.

In the sidebar of your WordPress layout, you can place a lot of widgets.

However, what you really need in there are the things that will help your visitor to get a clear image about the topic your website is about.

Besides that it should show them how they can find what they are  looking for.

Basic Sidebar Widgets for WordPress

For me, there are some basic widgets that you should always use.

Registration option for Updates

In order to allow your visitor to keep informed about new postings is your first widget.
Whether you have a mailing list via MailChimp, Aweber or Feedburner that you want to build, you do have to get this option to give your visitor an easy working signup form.

A signup widget in your sidebar is the fastest and ever-present possibility.

Site Topics Selection

A custom menu widget containing the main categories of your website is also a must.

Such a menu gives your visitors the ability to see what your site is about and gives them instant access to your most important articles on a particular topic.

Latest Articles or Recent Posts

I almost always use this to show that there are regular updates. If you build a static website, then replace this recent article widget with a custom menu widget linking to your main pages.

Another option that could replace the Recent Posts widget is a Widget with your most Popular Posts. There is a special plugin that gives you that ability http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/wordpress-popular-posts/

Above widgets are the basics for about 95% of every WordPress site I do, perhaps you can take advantage of it.

Make sure in any case that you don't show the following widgets in your sidebar, they just use space you need for better things.

  • Meta widget – You know yourself how you can log in.
  • Date based archives with month selection: This list can get very long if you have been blogging for a longer period of time. People are not looking at the article date but for a certain topic.

Social Media Widget

Not everyone has an extensive online social life, so it depends on your own situation if you want it. It will get increasingly important to get high rankings in search engines.

A good social media widget can provide you with many new followers on Twitter, get Facebook likes, Google+ connections and more.

Site Dependent Sidebar Widgets

Other sidebar widgets you can think of, depending on the purpose of your site, are special text widgets like an About the Writer (Biography) widget.

In such a text widget, you can use HTML code to show an image or link to a special about or action page.

You can place an Ad widget to earn some money with your website.  You can use a plugin to help out like http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ad-squares-widget/ or http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/ad-codez-widget/. Both will give you an opportunity to rotate banner codes.

A special call to action widget that is specifically crafted towards the main goal of your site. Like the direct link widget on my Dutch website www.wphandleiding.nl with an image to guide visitors directly to the download page.

A Call to Action Sidebar Widgets

Tag Cloud Widget usage depends on the fact how well you have created tags on your site; you do have the main navigation categories. Tags can provide good extra navigation options.

Last but not least you should consider a search widget. It depends on your theme lay-out if you need one in your Sidebar. Most of your visitors will be used to look for a search option in the upper-right corner of your site.

This is a selection of sidebar widgets and reasons why I use them. And what about you, what widgets do you always show in your sidebar and why?

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress Setup Tagged With: layout, Plugins, sidebar, theme, widgets 3 Comments

How To Make WordPress Look Like a Website

Filed Under: WordPress Themes August 21, 2016

WordPress has come a long way since its beginning, it was created as a blogging platform but is now way beyond that. You can easily make WordPress look like a website with just a few configuration and theme options.

With the latest versions, especially version 3.0 where the custom menu feature was introduced you can use it for any kind of website.

Using WordPress custom menu's you can really create a good navigation for your website.

So how do you get from this:

Basic WordPress Theme

To something like this?

Make WordPress look like a website theme configuration

WordPress Theme Layout

If you have your WordPress website installed, it's now time to have it look like a regular website.

The first impression people will get when they visit your website is essential. They will either see a blog, or a website.

The way you make WordPress look like a website determined by the theme you choose and how you configured it.

Do you use a standard theme or a theme that has a special homepage layout?

Do you have a static homepage or do you show the most recent posts?

There are several options for choosing a special theme for your WordPress website.

You can search the free WordPress theme repository right from within your own WordPress installation. Go to Appearance -> Themes (aff). It opens with a search function that lets you select some search criteria. Upload your own, select one of the other options like Featured, Newest or Recently Updated.

Installing a WordPress Theme

The featured themes (aff) currently show:

Featured WordPress Themes

There are themes like:

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/responsive

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/suffusion

http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/eclipse

http://demo.onedesigns.com/pinboard/

http://demo.onedesigns.com/esplanade

Or you can go for a, very affordable, premium theme from ThemeForest.net, ElegantThemes.com or my personal favorite, but more expensive, themes from StudioPress.com.

Most of these themes will start with a featured image or an image slider on the frontpage, make sure you capture your visitors and keep them on your site.

Some of these themes require an extra plugin to show a slider on your homepage. Those plugins could be wp-cycle or http://www.featuredcontentgallery.com/

There are several others, and you can find a good selection at http://speckyboy.com/2010/06/30/top-10-content-slider-plugins-for-wordpress/

Static Frontpage or Blog Posts

If you want to use a regular theme, you can still make you WordPress site look like a website.

The first thing you need to do is to create a page that will become your homepage.

Just one small warning, do NOT call this Home! If you call it Home it will create a permalink /home/ and that could become a problem.

If you ever want to switch to a theme that does work with a special homepage layout. They will use a theme file called home.php and that might cause you real problems.

And please, don't call this page Welcome or start with Welcome to my website! That is such a waste of your homepage function.

I might have searched the web and found your website, it might have been mentioned in an advertisement or was referred to my by a friend. So, unless you blocked your site for normal visitors, I know I am welcome.

Just give your visitor really good information about you, your service or your interest, tell them what your website is all about. Lead them into your site and show them where your most valuable content is.

Tell them what you want to tell them!

And don't forget to show some good images, a good picture can make a difference. Your website visitors are more attracted to images than text. If they scan your website to get a first impression an image can help to keep them on that page so they start reading.

Your theme might show the option to get comments on that page, in that situation you need to un-check the comments and trackback functions. Look for these options.

WordPress Discussion Settings

If you don't see those options active the Discussion and Comments checkbox in the screen display options (upper-right corner of your edit screen, just above the Publish option).

WordPress Screen Display Options

Once you created that page, you need to make a separate one that will be used to show your posts. You don't need to use posts, but it is a good thing to have your setup ready in case you want to start writing posts.

You can call this page anything you like. You can call it Blog or News or something that might add value to your website. Ramblings, Thoughts, Special Articles it doesn't matter what you want to call it. Just name it so you can use it if you want to start using posts.

Now here is the best thing about this page: Give it the Title you want and publish the page. Do not write anything on that page! Leave it blank.

WordPress Page Creation

If you get those two pages done it's time to configure WordPress so it will show your homepage and it knows where to show your posts (if any).

In your Dashboard go to Settings -> Reading and chose Front page displays option A Static page.

The static homepage settings to make WordPress look a website

You can select the page you just created via a drop down menu when you click the left arrows.

Save your settings and check your website, you should see the intro page you created as the Frontpage of your website.

If you don't see the new version, try to refresh your browser via Ctrl+F5. That will get the latest version of your site instead of the cached one that your browser might show.

Getting Your Sidebar in Shape

Once you get your site's basic layout ready it's now time to look at your sidebar.

Your default sidebar is very likely to show things like Recent Posts, Archives, and Meta or it says Primary Widget Area. It all depends on the theme that is active on your site.

Page with Image and Sidebar

Now Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, Archives and Meta are a dead give away that this is a WordPress blog. You need to get rid of those widgets and replace theme with a good navigational menu.

You can read How To Use WordPress Custom Menu's and create a good menu that will show the basic navigation items for your website.

Place that Custom menu in your primary sidebar via Appearance -> Widgets and drag the Custom Menu widget into your Primary Sidebar screen.

You can see below that it will warn you if you don't have a menu yet and guide you to get one done. If you have one, you can select it.

Primary Sidebar Custom Menu Widget

The best part of these custom menus is that you can have several of them. I like to split my menu's in two separate ones. The first one will contain the navigation into the meat of my sites and the second one contains informational links like the About page, a Sitemap, Contact page and a Privacy Statement page.

Where I want to show these menus depends on the layout or the theme. You want your primary navigation menu in the most prominent place in your website. It should be the first thing your visitor can see if they want to browse through your website.

The second menu should not be hidden away in some obscure place, but it should be less prominent.

Once you placed this widget in your primary sidebar, the other widgets will disappear. Those widgets were there to act as placeholders to show you where your sidebar is located. There might be some widgets already in the sidebar, simply delete the ones you don't want. Search might be one to leave active.

Your theme choice will also determine if your primary sidebar is located on the left side of your screen or on the right side.

Choosing Your Website Theme

For a blog, it is most likely to show the sidebar on the right side, if your theme has that option to switch it to the left, use that. It will also make your WordPress site look more like a normal website.

If your theme does not support it via an option, your might need to change it in the index.php file or in its style sheet.

How you can change that is a completely different subject, the best option to get to know how to change that is to ask in the support forum of your theme.

For the website shown above I used the new default Twenty Twelve theme from WordPress with the plugins One Click Child Theme to make sure my customizations will stick after a Twenty Twelve theme upgrade. I also used a Custom Headers plugin because with this new theme, there is no custom header function for pages.

So now it's up to you to get the layout that makes your WordPress website look like a website instead of a blog.

Affiliate Link Disclosures

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress Themes Tagged With: CMS, theme, website, wordpress 11 Comments

WordPress 3.4 Green Release

Filed Under: Weblog News, WordPress Themes June 13, 2012

If you login to your WordPress website you will see a notice about the new WordPress 3.4 release. If you want to start a new WordPress website, this release is the new stable version.

There are several great improvements in this release, like the theme preview function.

With this option, you can check how your website would look with a new theme, and you can change configuration options without activating the theme!

WordPress Twenty Eleven Preview
WordPress 3.4 Theme Preview. Read more on WordPress News

Besides this theme preview you also get better performance and better image handling with captions. You can now place HTML code like a link into the caption field.

Do I Need to Upgrade?

It is always a good idea to keep up-to-date with a new release, but make sure you first make a good back-up. You can then always revert back if you run into trouble with a theme or a plugin that is not compatible.

I will update some minor WordPress website first and take it from there.

Be Carefull, if you changed the standard Twenty Eleven theme, make sure you back it up. This new version will overwrite your changes!

If you want to read more on the new features, like the embedded tweet function, go to http://wordpress.org/news/2012/06/green/

Together with some good performance updates definitely a fine update, so go ahead and try the new WordPress 3.4 Green Release on your blog / website.

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: Weblog News, WordPress Themes Tagged With: Release, theme, Twenty Eleven Leave a Comment

WordPress Agent Theme for Real Estate Agents

Filed Under: WordPress CMS, WordPress Themes May 13, 2013

WP Agent Theme Colors

Brain Gardner, WordPress theme designer extraordinaire, just announced the release of a new theme specifically targeted to Real Estate Agents.

This theme comes with great features like automatic thumbnail creation and special pages for your real estate listing.

There are separate writing panels for your listings with fields for price and other items pertaining to the property. You write the data, and the theme will handle the layout so that every listing has the same format.

For Google maps code, there is a special field where you only need the location code.

WordPress Real Estate Agent Theme

It comes with four different color schemes that give you the ability to use the one that best fits your company. You also get the PSD files, so you can make your own changes or hire AgentPress to do further customization for you.

WordPress Theme for Realestate Agent in Tan

Different ideas for usage

Although this theme was developed by Brian Gardner together with Nicole Nicolay (of My Tech Opinion) for real estate agents, it looks to me like you can adapt this theme. With a few simple changes, you can make it work for different agents like car dealers, motorcycle companies, and even custom car builders.

In fact, every company that chooses to showcase their products with several photos can benefit by using this theme.

If you want to build a professional website for marketing products in the high end consumer market, the SEO-ready Agent Theme from StudioPress (aff) may be just what you need.

Affiliate Link Disclosures

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress CMS, WordPress Themes Tagged With: Build, building, CMS, Customers, Magazine Style, theme, wordpress 12 Comments

Classic WordPress Website Theme – Magazine by StudioPress Brain Gardner

Filed Under: WordPress CMS, WordPress Themes July 17, 2013

Brian Gardner is showing off the redesign of his Magazine Theme, which is already a classic.

WordPress Magazine Theme
The most recent version of the Magazine Theme for WordPress

If you look at the new features in the header, you can see why this is going was a great theme to use for Building a website with WordPress. (I now switched to Metro Theme)

The tabs at the top are great for extra pages, and the category links will make it easy to “theme” your site.

In Brian's post, he also shows the new configuration panel that will make it a lot easier to work with for the not-so-technical WordPress website builders.

With this theme, just like the Thesis theme, there are extra fields in the posting panel to give writers a simpler method for adding images to a post and have them show up in the correct positions.

I suppose that the new automatic thumbnail creation that is now implemented in a lot of  Studiopress themes (aff) will also be part of this theme…

WordPress Magazine Theme
The Old Magazine Theme Design

To be honest with you, there is one thing I don't like about this theme…. the colors used for the links and headers. As you can tell from my new website theme, I prefer blue!

The new version of Magazine now offers 7 colos styles, including blue. It is now also build as a responsive theme so you can look good on all kinds of mobile and other devices!

Affiliate Link Disclosures

By Herbert-Jan van Dinther Filed Under: WordPress CMS, WordPress Themes Tagged With: CMS, theme, website, wordpress 3 Comments

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