“Sidebar & Widget Manager for WordPress” Documentation by “OTWthemes” v1.0
“Sidebar & Widget Manager for WordPress”
Thank you for purchasing this item. If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please email us via our user page contact form here. We'd be glad to help you. No guarantees, but we'll do our best to assist.
Table of Contents
- Description
- Installation and Activation
- Showcase
- Widgetize a page and drop some widgets in
- Vertical and Horizontal widget alignment
- Replace a sidebar with a custom one on one or few pages
- Widgets can be displayed on or hidden from one or few pages
- OTW Content Sidebars
- Filter examples
- Page templates
- Template hierarchy
- User roles
- WPML plugin
- Translations
- Additional Information
A) Description - top
Get full control over sidebars (widget areas), page content and widgets:
- Widgetize a page so you can drag and drop widgets in page content area
- Create custom sidebars so you can display relevant content on different pages
- You can now have a different set of widgets on one or few pages
- Every widget can now be display on or hidden from one or few pages
- Full support of pages, page templates, posts , categories, tags, archives, custom post types, taxonomies
- Designed to fit into the core WordPress design
- Easy and intuitive administration
- No coding required
This plugin supports it all:
- Pages
- Page templates
- Posts
- Categories
- Tags
- Archives
- Custom post types
- Taxonomies
- Post type archives
- WordPress service pages - home, front, 404, search, etc.
B) Installation and Activation - top
Unzip the .zip file that you downloaded from CodeCanyon. Look for a file called otw_sbm.zip. This is your plugin's zip file.
Install the plugin just like any other Wordpress plugin. There are two ways to do that:
- Using WordPress built-in installer
From the Administration Panels, click on the Plugins tab. Go to Add New->Upload. Choose the plugin's .zip file from your computer and click Install Now. Then click activate to activate the plugin.
- Traditional manual installation
Extract zip archive of your plugin. Upload to your server in the wp-content/plugins folder of your WordPress installation. Access the Plugin Panel in your Administration Panels. Scroll down through the list of Plugins to find the newly installed Plugin. Click on the Activate link to turn the Plugin on.
When activated the plugin will place two menus in your WordPress menu called Sidebars and Widgets and OTW Content Sidebars.
C) Showcase - top
Please refer to the plugin's demo site.
D) Widgetize a page and drop some widgets in - top
- Create as many sidebars as you need
- Create a new page
- Create as many rows and columns as you need
- Insert as many sidebars as you need
- Go to your widgets section and drop some widgets in your new sidebars
Your other options are to copy the sidebars shortcode and paste it in a page/post or use the "Insert Sidebar Shortcode" button in the editor to insert your sidebar's shortcode.
E) Vertical and Horizontal widget alignment - top
- Vertical
This is the default WordPress widget alignment. The widgets in sidebars (widget areas) with vertical alignment are arranged in a column bellow each other.
- Horizontal
The widgets in sidebars (widget areas) with horizontal alignment will be arranged in a row next to each other (lined up on the same line).
Such widget areas are fluid and very flexible. The widget area width will be equally divided between all widgets in this widget area. Horizontal alignement is usually used on widgetized pages.
Check out this
article for better understanding.
- Create a custom sidebar
- Choose which sidebar to replace
- Choose pages, templates, post, taxonomies that will display the new sidebar
- Go to your widgets section and drop some widgets in your new sidebar
- Go to your widgets section
- Every widget has a button named Set Visibility
- Choose where is the widget displayed on or hidden from
OTW Content Sidebars are positions that you can set and use to add sidebars to your pages/posts content area. You can set the defaults for you post and pages. If you want a different configuration for a certain page or post you can override defaults from the OTW Content Sidebar metabox when you edit that page or post.
Please note that OTW Content Sidebars are part of the content area. So if you have any theme sidebars (not in the content) they will be displayed as well.
When you use OTW Content Sidebars for pages it is best to use a full width page. If your theme does not have such template you can copy otw-full-width-page.php from the /templates folder of the Sidebar Widget Manager plugin and past it in your theme folder. Go to "Add new page" in your WP administration. You should now see "OTW page full width" in your Template's dropdown. Please note that there is no guarantee this file will work as is since page templates are very theme specific and it might require some modifications.
If you'd like to use OTW Content Sidebars for your posts you will most probably need to modify the template file for your posts so it does not display any sidebars.
I) Filter examples - top
1. Page templates
A selected Page templates will include all Pages with that template even if the pages are diselected.
In the following example we have selected all page templates and no pages at all. The current sidebar we set up will be displayed on all pages because Page templates will include all pages.

2. Template hierarchy
Template Hierarchy -> Page will include all Page Templates and Pages even if they are diselected.
In the following example we have selected Page under Template Hierarchy and no pages at all. The current sidebar we set up will be displayed on all pages because Template Hierarchy -> Page will include all pages. This is in WordPress by default.
3. User roles
You can set up a sidebar or a widget to be visible for a certain user role
The sidebar in the following example will be displayed for all user roles.

4. WPML plugin
Lets say you have a page called Contacts-en which is in English and a page that is translation in Spanish - Contacts-es. Here are a few examples:
- To display a sidbear for the English version of that page only you need to select the Contacts-en page under Pages and English under WPML plugin language.
- To display a sidbear for the English and the Spanish version of that page only you need to select the Contacts-en and Contacts-es under Pages and English and Spanish under WPML plugin language.
- To display a sidebar for all pages in English you need to select Page under Template Hierarchy and English under WPML plugin language.
J) Translations - top
Here is a list of available transtations:
If you'd like to see your translation distributed with the plugin please contact us.
All language files are located in /language folder. To set a language different than English, open your wp-config.php file and set the WPLANG to the language you want, for example with spanish:
define('WPLANG', 'es_ES');
K) Additional Information - top
Once again, thank you for purchasing this item. If you have any questions that are beyond the scope of this help file, please email us via our user page contact form here. We'd be glad to help you. No guarantees, but we'll do our best to assist.
If you like this item please consider rating it as a way of supporting consistent improvements.
If you have a more general question relating to the items on CodeCanyon, you might consider visiting the forums and asking your question in the "Item Discussion" section.
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