Learn how to Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages in WordPress. There are situations when you like to show or hide widgets on specific posts, pages, archives, etc. In this article, I will share how you can easily control widgets visibility on specific pages in WordPress. Should you hide widgets on specific pages? Is there any benefit of doing that? Or let me rephrase it, what can you achieve when you show or hide widgets on certain pages in WordPress?
We all use widgets in WordPress for various purposes. Many modern WordPress themes are based on widgetized static homepage like Genesis Themes and other landing pages with widgetized sections throughout the layout. The point is, that widgets are quite common in WordPress.
Consider a scenario in which you want to show or hide a widget on some specific pages. For example, you don’t want to display the same widgets on homepage that of the single post, or vice-versa. There may be such other situations in which you might want to display widgets on specific pages in WordPress.
But as of now, WordPress does not come with a native feature to control widgets’ visibility on specific pages, posts, or archives.
So, what is the solution?
We will talk in a while, about how to control widget visibility and how to add a widget to a specific page in WordPress.
Before that, let’s see what could be the possible reasons (or say benefits) of showing or hiding widgets on certain pages in WordPress.
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Should You Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages in WordPress?
I am listing a few basic reasons (benefits) why you may consider hiding widgets on some pages. Though you might have your own reasons to show or hide widgets in WordPress.
- Pagespeed: First of all, fewer resources on a web page means more page speed. And everyone loves faster websites.
- Higher Conversion Rate: Relevance is always helpful for a higher conversion rate. Widgets Visibility Control (WVC) is quite useful if you are running a multi-niche website. In that case, you might want to show a widget to the targeted visitors of a specific page. As the content of that widget is more relevant to the visitors of that specific page. Hence, it may help to boost conversion rates. (Email Sign-ups, Ad conversion, etc.)
- User Experience & Design: Sometimes a widget does not go right with the design of a webpage. Or let me put it this way you might want to hide the widget to create a distraction-free page or content.
Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages, Posts or Archive in WordPress
You can use WordPress plugins to Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages in WordPress. The use of these plugins is an easy and reliable method to do the trick.
#1 Widget Options
Widget Options is another popular plugin to show or hide widgets on specific pages in WordPress. It offers several features for widget visibility control. This plugin adds options below every widget to show or hide widget on specific pages.
Widget Options not only enables widget visibility control options but it also offers widget appearance options. Using this plugin you can assign different widget content on different pages, including/excluding mobile screens.
[Download Widget Options Plugin]
#2 Widget Context
Widget Context plugin offers a variety of features to display widgets on certain sections of your WordPress website.
With this plugin, you can control where your widgets appear by defining specific conditions based on pages, posts, categories, archives, homepage, and more. Also, you can target by URLs.
You can configure widget visibility by visiting:
- Individual widget settings under “Appearance → Widgets” in your WordPress dashboard, or
- Through widget editing options in Customizer.
#3 Jetpack by WordPress.com
The next plugin in this sequence is Jetpack by WordPress.com. It is one of the most popular free plugins available on WordPress Plugin Repository. If you use Jetpack plugin on your website, you can utilize the same plugin to show or hide widgets in WordPress. Once you install and activate Jetpack plugin, it will add a widget visibility feature to all the widgets automatically. And you can configure widget visibility from the widget itself.
[Download Jetpack by WordPress.com Plugin]
#4 Dynamic Widgets
Dynamic Widgets also offers widget control visibility features to display/hide widgets on specific areas of your WordPress website.
This plugin lets you seamlessly control widget display on WordPress pages through simple conditional logic rules.
No PHP expertise is needed—just a few clicks allow you to show or hide widgets based on Roles, Dates, Browsers, Featured Images, IPs, Mobile Devices, Themes, Languages, URLs, and more.
You can tailor widgets visibility for the Homepage, Single Posts, Attachments, Pages, Authors, Categories, Tags, Archives, Error and Search Pages, Custom Post Types, Taxonomies, BuddyPress components & groups, Pods pages, WPEC/WPSC categories, and bbPress. Experience unparalleled flexibility without the hassle.
[Download Dynamic Widgets Plugin]#5 Widget Logic
[Updated: This plugin had not been updated for more than three years ason December 17, 2023. It used to be a good plugin. If the plugin’s publisher is/are reading this, you are always welcome to let us know that you have updated it.]
We have used this plugin on different WordPress sites to display widgets on specific pages. All you need is to install and activate the plugin. Once you do that it will add widget visibility control to every widget.
You can control widget visibility by two methods. Either you can use WordPress Conditional Tags in the Text Field. Or you can use pre-defined drop menu schemes generated by the plugin to show or hide widgets on specific pages in WordPress.
[Download Widget Logic Plugin]
#6 Other Plugins
There are a few other plugins available on WordPress repository, which you can try to display widgets on specific pages in WordPress: Conditional Widgets, and Restrict Widgets (Update: As these two plugins have not been updated in the last two years).
Conclusion
Hiding widgets on some pages may help you to achieve some basic things like page speed, higher conversion rate, and better UX & UI. Hence you should consider utilizing the widgets visibility control feature on your WordPress site.
If you’re already using Jetpack plugin for other features offered by the plugin. You may use Jetpack for widget visibility control. Otherwise, it is not a good idea to use a bulky (large size) multi-feature Jetpack plugin only for widget visibility control. In that case, you may use Widget Options or Widget Context.
Hope this article is helpful for you to show or hide widgets on specific pages in WordPress. Which plugin do you use to control widget visibility in WordPress? Have a question regarding this topic? Feel free to ask via comments. I will be happy to help.
Cheers!
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Thank you so much. Configured with Jetpack. It worked like a charm.
Hi Kriti,
Glad that I could help.
Thanks for dropping by!