There are (among others) two common ways of customizing the sidebar on an individual post:
-
Create a new sidebar for the post, using code or plugins like Custom sidebars, WP Custom Sidebar, Per Page Sidebars, or similar.
-
Create conditional display rules on individual widgets, using plugins like Widget Logic or Conditional Widgets.
Option 1 can lead to a proliferation of sidebars on your Widgets page if you have more than a few posts you want to customize. Option 2 can quickly lead to long, complicated, and difficult-to-manage sidebars in the backend. And with both 1 and 2, the user has to manage things on a separate page than the page she wants to customize.
So:
Are there any plugins—or related attempts—to add a sidebar/widget editor, (like in Appearance » Widgets) to the post edit screen? The idea would be to give the user the option to override the default sidebar on a given page in a convenient and intuitive way.
It might work something like this:
- Add a metabox containing a checkbox to override default sidebar on that post or page.
- If checked, display interface to select widgets. (this could be the full widget ‘bank’, but, more economically, it could just be a dropdown with names of widgets).
- For the interface and saving, recycle code from Appearance » Widgets
- For front of site, include filter to replace the default sidebar if
_override_sidebar
meta field says so.
I’m surprised I can’t seem to find a plugin for this. Do you have suggestions—plugins, pitfalls, related code?