Customizing the Widgets area

[turtledove]

I'm using LifeStyle Pro theme and for my site, I make a customized sidebar (using Genesis Simple Sidebars) for every post on my site. This allows me to then put whatever I want in the sidebar of each post.

However, because I now have 50+ posts on my site, I now have 50+ custom sidebars in my Appearance/Widgets area. Each new sidebar is added to the bottom of the list of sidebars and with so many sidebars, it's become increasingly difficult to drag and drop the widgets I want into the new sidebars.

I'm looking for a plugin that will help me manage the sidebars or organize them so that the new sidebars I create will be at the top of the list, not at the bottom. This would put them a lot closer to the Available Widgets area and would make dragging and dropping the widgets into the sidebars much easier.

Does anyone know of a plugin that will help me customize the Widgets area of my WP dashboard like this?

[Porter]

How unique is the content variation that you're putting in the sidebar of each post? Having even 10+ sidebars seems inefficient, 50+ is outrageous. Give a few examples of what content you're putting there, and how it differs between pages, because there's likely a dynamic, programmatic solution to this.

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[turtledove]

Hey Porter.

Thanks for your response. I know this set up is unconventional but here's why I have it like that:

My site is an affiliate site and it's made up of short (ie around 100 words) posts which are essentially product descriptions. One of the main sources of traffic is Pinterest and that means that I have to have a pin for each post and each pin has to be on the pg of the post it corresponds to.

That way I can then pin my pins to my Pinterest boards and link back to the specific post that the pin is from.

After experimenting with different options, the best solution to getting each Pinterest pin on the same pg as its corresponding post was to put it in a custom sidebar.

So the content that goes into each sidebar is unique in that each sidebar has a completely different - and unique - Pinterest pin, created specifically for that post.

I hope that makes sense!

I've already contacted StudioPress tech support but they couldn't help but they did say there may be a customized css solution and suggested I reach out in the WP and StudioPress forums.

[Porter]

I have no idea why they referenced a css solution, that makes little to no sense haha.

That being said, I believe I know of a fantastic, extremely clean solution that would only require one sidebar, or a slight alteration to the page template, depending on how it's set up.

One more question before I confirm this will work, and help you set that up - how are you adding the unique pins? Are they a url? Are you uploading a photo? What exactly is the content, and how are you adding it? Is it a text widget area, added to the side bar?

If this works, it'll be 1000x better for you, and you can get rid of the sidebars completely.

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[turtledove]

Hey Porter.

So here's my process:

1) Each pin is created as a png. Each one is unique and created only for that specific post; no pin will ever be on more than 1 pg on the site

2) Each pin is uploaded to the media library

3) I created a custom sidebar for the post using Genesis Simple Sidebars

4) I go to the Appearance/Widgets section and add a Text widget to the newly created custom sidebar

5) I then put coding into the widget - just regular image coding which includes the URL of the pin (from my media library)

Ihope that answers your questions. Please remember that each pin HAS to be on the same pg as the post it was created for

Thanks!

[Porter]

Perfect, I can make this work for you in a much more elegant way. Here's what we're going to do:

-We're going to set up a single custom side bar using the plugin you already have.
-Then going to install the Advanced Custom Fields plugin, which I can't rate highly enough (I avoid plugins, this is one of my favorite, if not my favorite).
-We'll then create a "Pinterest Information" section in Advanced Custom Fields, which will be of the image type (to select the .png you need)
-Next we'll create a custom short code in functions.php that will grab the information of our "Pinterest Information" advanced custom field, and display it.
-Finally, we'll call that shortcode in the custom sidebar from the text widget, just like you were already doing with the code.

What this does, is creates a new section on our posts where we select the pinterest image, just like when you select the "featured image", or write in the editor area, we're simply adding a custom section, just to posts (or anywhere else you need, but we can specify). This means that each post is storing the pinterest information itself, rather than the sidebar, and the SINGLE custom sidebar is calling a function that pulls up that SPECIFIC information from each posts, and displays that on each page. So the end result is one side bar, posts storing the pinterest information, and every page displaying the information it needs, be it 1 post, or 1 million posts.

If setting that up is out of your comfort zone, I'd be willing to do it for you. I'll need access to login to the dashboard, as well as FTP access so I can edit functions.php, unless you want me to edit it directly from the customizer, but I prefer not to do that, as I can't fix things if I make a PHP error. Let me know what you want!

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[turtledove]

This reply has been marked as private.

[Porter]

I had a hunch you had responded, but I didn't get an email since the reply is "private". Email me whatever you said / any info at gemfruit |at| gmail.com, as I can't see the private reply.

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