WEBVTT 00:00.160 --> 00:03.580 In this lesson I'm going to show you how to customize your sidebar. 00:03.600 --> 00:07.200 The sidebar appears on any page with this sidebar. 00:07.290 --> 00:12.990 So it's an important thing to add and to make sure that it's doing the right thing for your web site. 00:12.990 --> 00:16.120 Now let me show you a couple of different Web sites that I like. 00:16.170 --> 00:19.050 Well one is mine and what is the side hustle nation. 00:19.050 --> 00:20.390 So first site Housel nation. 00:20.400 --> 00:23.860 Let's see what's going on on their side bar which appears on their blog posts. 00:23.940 --> 00:28.670 Their podcast post and this is important because a lot of people might be coming directly to your Web 00:28.670 --> 00:30.120 site to this page. 00:30.120 --> 00:32.110 They're not going to be going to your home page. 00:32.130 --> 00:37.620 So if there's things like your Facebook page there's specific articles or pages you want people to see 00:37.620 --> 00:42.780 or go to if you have an opt in form where you want someone to sign up for your e-mail newsletter. 00:42.780 --> 00:47.340 This is the place to put it with site Housel nation they have a search bar at the top which I think 00:47.340 --> 00:52.920 is very important for people who want to be able to search on your site for specific topics. 00:53.010 --> 00:56.860 They have a JOIN THE NATION opt in form at the very top. 00:56.880 --> 01:02.520 So every time someone visits their blog or article they'll see this if they're not a member then Lossie 01:02.550 --> 01:07.600 and potentially want to join the tribe join the newsletter of this Web site. 01:07.620 --> 01:11.400 They have some Greatest Hits and favorite blog articles. 01:11.400 --> 01:13.320 This looks like a plug in that he's using. 01:13.350 --> 01:19.560 There's different plug ins that you can use to list out your most popular posts or maybe even some specific 01:19.560 --> 01:20.610 post that you like. 01:20.610 --> 01:25.510 These are things that we'll be learning how to do in terms of adding plug ins in a future lesson. 01:25.560 --> 01:30.690 He has a YouTube video that is one of his favorites that he's put here. 01:30.690 --> 01:32.280 He has different topics. 01:32.310 --> 01:36.000 So these are probably the categories for his different blog posts. 01:36.090 --> 01:42.000 And then also maybe perhaps some advertisements or some images that you want to add as well. 01:42.120 --> 01:46.250 For me on my sidebar I keep it pretty simple with the search bar at top. 01:46.290 --> 01:48.150 I have my big opt in form. 01:48.270 --> 01:50.310 This is created with a convert kit. 01:50.310 --> 01:52.780 So I use convert kit for my email marketing. 01:52.800 --> 01:55.090 And so this is created in convert. 01:55.140 --> 01:59.510 And then I added the code into my sidebar on wordpress. 01:59.520 --> 02:04.950 So if you use convert kit you can get something like this or no matter what type of email service you're 02:04.950 --> 02:08.450 using this probably some kind of opt in form you can add. 02:08.460 --> 02:12.440 And we're going to be adding an e-mail opt in to our site in a future lesson. 02:12.480 --> 02:15.600 I have my Facebook page here so people can like it. 02:15.690 --> 02:22.500 And then some most popular post which is just actually a custom list of posts that I've created from 02:22.500 --> 02:25.860 some of my best posts that I want people to potentially click on. 02:25.860 --> 02:32.000 So how do you actually added this to your dashboard and go under appearance to widgets. 02:32.040 --> 02:37.950 These are called widgets so you can see here we have our Sidebar right here. 02:37.950 --> 02:40.230 And these are the widgets on our Sidebar. 02:40.230 --> 02:46.040 There's different areas where we can add widgets and we'll go over the FOTR and other things later. 02:46.050 --> 02:47.970 But this is just the sidebar. 02:47.970 --> 02:50.340 So this is what's in our sidebar right now search. 02:50.340 --> 02:52.440 Recent Posts recent comments et cetera. 02:52.630 --> 02:55.770 Then on the left do you have all of your available widgets. 02:55.830 --> 03:00.620 So if I want to just get rid of some of these widgets I can just select it and delete it. 03:00.660 --> 03:06.210 Right now I don't have that much content so I'm not going to include the categories or an archives or 03:06.270 --> 03:07.170 recent comments. 03:07.170 --> 03:13.400 I don't really see a reason for including recent comments potentially recent posts which might be good. 03:13.500 --> 03:19.770 So now if I go back to my blog post or any page that has the sidebar I see just the search and in the 03:19.770 --> 03:25.680 recent posts if I want to change the text up here from recent posts to something else I can just type 03:25.680 --> 03:28.400 in a new title it automatically uses the text. 03:28.420 --> 03:32.220 Recent posts but maybe I want to say latest articles. 03:32.610 --> 03:37.830 Or if it's just one specific type of podcast article that you write or something like that you can just 03:37.830 --> 03:38.460 write that. 03:38.460 --> 03:43.230 So if I saved that and then refreshed you can see that this changes to latest articles. 03:43.230 --> 03:46.320 Now over on the left you have different options. 03:46.320 --> 03:53.970 So if you want you can add a calendar you can add tag clouds that will show all of the tags that you've 03:53.970 --> 03:54.810 used. 03:54.810 --> 03:58.440 You can add pages or you can add custom text. 03:58.440 --> 04:04.470 This is perhaps where you would add a little about section so you can add an About section so maybe 04:04.470 --> 04:12.810 I'll say I'm a d i y woodworker etc. don't want to waste your time so I would just fill that out a little 04:12.810 --> 04:13.620 bit more. 04:13.650 --> 04:16.880 Save it and put it here. 04:16.980 --> 04:22.500 Perhaps above recent posts that might be good for someone who's new to your website to quickly understand 04:22.590 --> 04:25.240 who is the creator of this Web site. 04:25.290 --> 04:29.370 This is also how you would add a custom optin form. 04:29.370 --> 04:35.270 Typically you'll get DML code from your Opt-In form and you'll add it here using the text block. 04:35.310 --> 04:37.860 So that's how you added it in the next couple of videos. 04:37.860 --> 04:44.850 I'm going to show you how to add specific things such as an image and this space book like widget. 04:44.850 --> 04:47.180 Thanks so much for watching and we'll see you then.