Tuesday Musings – To Have a Sidebar or a Full-Width Layout

bysukumarth

1.1K followers

Updated 6 years ago

To sidebar or not, that’s something that used to frustrate me sometime back.

When I first created my website here in Wealthy Affiliate (in a music niche), I was very raw. I did not think too much about sidebars and all that. I was busy learning how to create a website in WordPress, do keywords research for my posts and complete all the tasks in my Certification.

I had simple ideas about how a website should look – a beautiful header image, a sidebar with different widgets and ads or banners, and if the theme allowed, a beautiful background. I did not think about having a footer then and I tried to cram everything in the drop-down menus on the menu bar.

I wanted to have everything on the sidebar – widgets (categories, search bar, archives, recent posts, recent comments), WA banners, Jaaxy banner, affiliate products, Google ads. It’s as if I didn’t want my visitors to think that I was unprofessional, and having all those visual elements made me feel secure. The banners and ads were positioned more as baits to earn possible leads, sign-ups and revenue when people “accidentally” clicked on them. How naive!

This was 10 months ago.

Now that I have matured a bit, I was looking at the option of dropping the sidebar altogether. I have seen that while many authority websites do not employ the sidebar, some still have it. Neil Patel has it. So I had to confront the question again – to have a sidebar or not.

I love the minimalist design with everything stripped down to just a few bare elements. I tried with a minimalist look but long days of living with the sidebar left me with an empty feeling when it was removed. It had been such an integral part of my website.

So, I had to give myself more time to get used to the full-width layout that I was employing now. Fortunately, my theme allows me to customise everything very quickly and without many hassles. So, the sidebar was gone and with it all its appendages – the widgets, the banners and the ads. I brought the subscribers’ opt-in form down in the footer along with my brief bio. I have a pseudo sidebar now – actually, a slider sidebar that sides in at the click in its designated button.

My website has now a full-width layout, with footer, and a slider sidebar. The slider sidebar is opened only by those who linger on my site for long and hence, has a few elements only – random posts, a banner and my tweets (a Twitter widget).

Initially, like I said, I was slightly uneasy with the almost vacant minimalist look that I was trying to achieve. But I had to force myself get accustomed to it because I was starting to love it. It looks airy, roomy, with lots of white spaces and with a deliberate design that tries to let readers focus on the content only. No frills, no nonsense.

Then a few days back, I was curious to see the previous look of my website. So, I just activated by right sidebar with all the usual elements.

By now, I had grown so accustomed to the full-width layout of my site that when the sidebar appeared, it suddenly made me feel all cramped. It was stifling and made me uneasy.

How strange! This was the same design that I had used from the beginning. This was almost my signature style that time.

Why then was I not feeling comfortable with it? Is it only a simple case of brain conditioning or something else? Let me not bother myself with all these questions now.

I love my full-width look now. So be it.

I cannot say which style is better. In the end, it’s a matter of one’s choice. Whether you employ the full-width layout look or one with a sidebar, it’s about making your visitors feel comfortable and welcoming.

I also think it’s about creating an intrigue too.