How to Add a Sticky Sidebar in WordPress

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Do you want to add a sticky sidebar in WordPress to display important widgets? Here is how to effortlessly create a sticky floating sidebar widget in WordPress with a plugin.

You don’t need to be a developer to do this – I will show you how to do it with a plugin.

You can make any element on your blog sticky, regardless of what that might be.

The main goal is always to make it visible to your blog users.

Whether they scroll up or down, the sticky element remains in position and visible. This helps attract more attention to the sticky item, improve conversion rate, boost engagements, etc.

But first, especially for beginners, let’s define the sticky sidebar. And why do you need to make an element of your blog sticky on the sidebar?

What is Sticky Sidebar in WordPress?

A sticky sidebar in WordPress or a fixed Sidebar is a sidebar element that remains visible or positioned. At the same time, users scroll up and down through the website’s web pages.

It leads to improving the call-to-action engagement rate, boosting conversion, and improving the overall user experience.

For example, a sticky sidebar ensures users access your important messages quickly.

Rather than scrolling back to the top to click on the desired sidebar menu, users can quickly locate the sidebar item and click on what matters without scrolling up the page.

Benefits of Sticky SideBar on Your Blog

In the above section, I have discussed the benefits of implementing a sticky sidebar on your website. But it is worth going a bit further down here.

As someone with practical experience with sticky sidebar on his blog, I can tell you more of its benefits from my experience.

First, whatever elements you make sticky on your blog remain visible to anyone visiting your website.

With this, you’re bringing more attention to that particular element. So it would be best to prioritize what you need to make it sticky.

Also, when users visit your website, you want to ensure they have quick access to your most important information/pages/content, etc. You can achieve this by making those important elements sticky on the page.

This helps improve user engagement, boost conversion rate, increase awareness, etc…

However, I do not recommend making too many elements sticky in the exact website location. For instance, the maximum recommendation on the sidebar should be two sticky elements.

If too many sticky elements compete for attention in the same spot, you will not get a better conversion rate for your most important message.

I only have the search box and the blog newsletter subscription form sticky on the sidebar of this blog.

The blog newsletter subscription form is an essential element on the sidebar. As you can see, I ensure it gets the overall attention in that spot.

This is because building an email list is at the top of the priority list.

Making a Sticky Sidebar With WordPress Plugin

One of the advantages of WordPress over other blogging platforms is the ability to quickly enable your desired blog functionality without knowing how to code.

Whatever function you want to add to your WordPress blog, there is ever a plugin for it. You only need to install, activate, and enable/configure the settings.

That makes WordPress the leading content management system today, and many developers support it well.

WordPress plugins make it super easy to make any elements sticky on your blog. There’s no coding knowledge required, and you only need to install and activate it.

However, finding the right WordPress plugin for the task could be a tedious search experience. You could spend hours searching for the right plugin.

So what I intend to do here is save you the guesswork.

There are many Sticky Sidebar WordPress Plugins today, but I have found the My StickySidebar WordPress plugin relatively easy to use and configure.

The plugin makes it easy to create floating sidebar elements in minutes. You can create a sticky floating sidebar widget in WordPress with the My Sticky Sidebar plugin.

It makes the process straightforward, even for beginners.

Installing My StickySidebar Plugin

The first thing you need to do to set up your sticky sidebar item is to install the plugin. After that, you activate it…

Here is the link to MyStickySidebar on the WordPress.org plugin repository. Download the plugin from WordPress.org or your WordPress admin area.

After installing and activation, you need to open the settings page to configure the plugin.

There are two CSS element classes or IDs you’ll need to find.

The sidebar element you want to make sticky and the container elements class or id contain in the sidebar element.

In the Sidebar elements CSS class or ID field, you’ll need to enter the sidebar element class or ID you want to make sticky.

Looking through the page source code to find the Sidebar element CSS class or ID could be tedious. You can find it through the page source code, but it takes a few tech skills to look up the class id through the source page.

However, you can learn how to find a CSS class or id in this post.

Once you locate the CSS class or id, enter the value in the field, as shown in the image above.

Then scroll down the page to click on the Save button.

Additional Settings

You may want to look into other settings, like the top and bottom of the page margin. Here you can define the top and bottom margins in Pixel.

Also, you can set the rule to disable if the user’s screen width is smaller than an xxx pixel.

Adding Custom CSS Style

If you’re using the paid version of MyStickySidebar, you can edit the CSS and add or create custom CSS entirely.

These extra features are helpful if you’re good at coding and know what you’re doing.

There is the option to disable MyStickySidebar on selected pages. This is in case you don’t want the sticky elements WordPress plugin on certain pages.

Always hit the save button down the page after changing the default settings.

Conclusion…

You may want to make an element(s) sticky on the sidebar for many reasons. Whatever it is, ensure you’re not interrupting the user experience on your blog.

A sticky sidebar should improve the user experience and bring your important message to the front and centre of your audience’s view.

My Sticky Sidebar is one of the best free WordPress Sticky plugins you can use to achieve your goal.