Why is that?

The main problem with blog navigation is that the content is not interlinked properly. That’s especially true for generic blogs that aren’t about one single topic.

When a visitor lands on your generic blog, they’re probably interested in only one of the topics that you cover. Say that topic is dogs. Even though all of your dog posts are grouped by “tags” and “categories”, your blog sidebar is probably distracting the visitor with links to other unrelated content about cycling, rock climbing or whatever else you write about.

Don’t distract your readers.

Give your readers only what they’re interested in at that moment and help them find more of it. Doing that will make your visitors stick around longer, browse more pages, and even improve your SEO!

Here’s how you can achieve that.

Clean Up Your Sidebars

On your post pages, you don’t have to tell the reader about all the categories and tags that you write about. Why would you clutter your sidebar with such information?

A list of categories and a tag cloud are useful information on the homepage because they give your reader an overview of the things that you write about. So, you can put those on the sidebar of the homepage, but not the sidebar of posts pages.

The problem is that most WordPress themes don’t separate the site-wide sidebar from the post sidebar. It is, however, essential to have a separate sidebar for posts if you’re serious about improving the navigation and layout of your blog. If your theme has a single sidebar for everything, read this post to learn how to give your posts their own sidebar.

Ideas for Relevant Content to Put on Your Posts Sidebar

The more a Web page is focused on a single topic and the more links to other related Web pages it has, the more search engine optimization weight it’ll carry for that topic. Making your sidebar relevant to the topic of the post itself will have huge benefits for your blog. Here are some ideas of the relevant content put on your sidebar:

• Related links to other posts on the same topic on your blog
• A list of categories that the post belongs to
• A list of tags that the post belongs to
• RSS feed for the categories and tags that the post belongs to

Use a Related Posts Plugin

Perhaps the best thing you could do to improve the navigation of your blog is to use a related posts plugin. The most popular plugin for this function is Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP).

Read this post to learn how you can put links to related posts on your sidebar using YARPP.

I hope you found these tips helpful. If you have any questions, comments, or suggestions on what else can be done to improve navigation, post them below!

Related posts:

1. Fix Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) Widget and Add it to the Sidebar
2. Give Posts Their Own Sidebar in WordPress
3. Sensible Use of “Tags” in a WordPress Blog

In this tutorial, I will show you the proper way to create a dynamic sidebar that is solely for posts.

Create a PHP File for the Sidebar

The first step is creating the actual PHP template file for the sidebar. Name the file sidebar-post.php. Put this file in the same folder where sidebar.php exists. Now copy the content of sidebar.php to the new file.

My sidebar.php looks like this:

<?php global $vigilance; ?>
  <div id="sidebar">
    <?php if ($vigilance->sideimgState() == 'hide') : else : ?>
      <?php if (is_file(STYLESHEETPATH . '/sidebar-imagebox.php')) include(STYLESHEETPATH . '/sidebar-imagebox.php'); else include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar-imagebox.php'); ?>
    <?php endif; ?>
    <?php if ($vigilance->feedState() == 'disabled') : else : ?>
      <?php if (is_file(STYLESHEETPATH . '/sidebar-feedbox.php')) include(STYLESHEETPATH . '/sidebar-feedbox.php'); else include(TEMPLATEPATH . '/sidebar-feedbox.php'); ?>
    <?php endif; ?>
    <ul>
      <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('right_sidebar') ) : ?>
        <li class="widget widget_recent_entries">
          <h2 class="widgettitle"><?php _e('Recent Articles'); ?></h2>
          <ul>
            <?php $side_posts = get_posts('numberposts=10'); foreach($side_posts as $post) : ?>
            <li><a href= "<?php the_permalink(); ?>"><?php the_title(); ?></a></li>
            <?php endforeach; ?>
          </ul>
        </li>
      <?php endif; ?>
    </ul>
    <?php if (is_active_sidebar('left_sidebar')) echo '<ul class="thin-sidebar spad">';?>
      <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('left_sidebar') ) : endif; ?>
    <?php if (is_active_sidebar('left_sidebar')) echo '</ul>'; ?>
    <?php if (is_active_sidebar('right_sidebar')) echo '<ul class="thin-sidebar">'; ?>
      <?php if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('right_sidebar') ) : endif; ?>
    <?php if (is_active_sidebar('right_sidebar')) echo '</ul>' ;?>
  </div><!--end sidebar-->

Unless you’re using the same theme that I copied this code from, Vigilance, you’ll most certainly have different code. Look at the code you’ve copied and find what looks like this:

if ( !function_exists('dynamic_sidebar') || !dynamic_sidebar('right_sidebar') ) : ?>

In your new file, sidebar-post.php, you should substitute right_sidebar (or whatever you have) with post_sidebar.

Register the Dynamic Post Sidebar

Now that you’ve created the PHP file for a widget-enabled sidebar, it is time to register this sidebar so that you can add widgets to it. You’ll have to  look into how your theme registers sidebars. In your theme’s folder, you should find a file called functions.php. In that file, look for a line that looks like this:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') ) register_sidebar(array(

The code in the theme that I’m using here is this:

if ( function_exists('register_sidebar') )
    register_sidebar(array(
        'name'=> __('Right Sidebar', 'vigilance'),
        'id' => 'right_sidebar',
        'before_widget' => '<li id="%1$s" class="widget %2$s">',
        'after_widget' => '</li>',
        'before_title' => '<h2 class="widgettitle">',
        'after_title' => '</h2>',
    ));

In the code above, you’d have to substitute Right Sidebar with Post Sidebar and right_sidebar with post_sidebar. Apply the equivalent changes to your own theme’s code.

Finally, Call Your New Sidebar from single.php

In most WordPress themes, a post page is displayed using the single.php template file. This file is where a sidebar gets called on. You’ll have to edit the line that calls the main sidebar to make it call the new sidebar that you’ve created above.

single.php is located at the main folder of the theme. In your single.php, look for the code get_sidebar(); and edit it to get_sidebar('post');.

That’s it! Now your post pages will display their own separate sidebar. To add widgets to this new sidebar, go to the widgets panel, find the sidebar named “Post Sidebar”, and drag widgets to it.

I hope you found this tutorial helpful. If you have any comments, questions, or suggestions, please post them below

Related posts:

1. Fix Yet Another Related Posts Plugin (YARPP) Widget and Add it to the Sidebar
2. Clean Your WordPress Sidebar to Improve Navigation and SEO!