How to Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages in WordPress

Learn how to Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages in WordPress. There are some instances 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 doing that?

We all use widgets in WordPress for various purposes. In fact, many modern WordPress themes are based on widgetize static home page like Genesis Themes and other landing pages with widgetized sections throughout the layout. The point is, 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 widgets of home page on the single post, or vice-versa. There may be such several conditions in which you might want to show or hide 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.

Should You Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages in WordPress?

I am listing few basic reasons (benefits) why you may consider to hide 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 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 this way that 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 plugins to Show or Hide Widgets on Specific Pages in WordPress. Using these plugins is an easy and reliable method to do the trick.

1. Widget Logic

We use this plugin on technumero.com to show or hide widgets on specific pages. All you need is to install and activate the plugin. Once you do that it will add widgets visibility control to every widget.

You can control widget visibility by two methods. Either you can use WordPress Conditional Tags in 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.

2. Display Widgets

This is another popular plugin to show or hide widgets in WordPress. This plugin adds check box menu to every widget to show or hide widget on specific pages. Though this plugin has not been updated since last two years. But it works well with newer versions of WordPress.

3. Jetpack by WordPress.com

The next plugin in this sequence is Jetpack by WordPress.com. And it is one of the most popular free plugin 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 widget visibility feature to all the widgets automatically. And you can configure widget visibility from the widget itself.

4. Others

There are few other plugins available on WP repository, which you can try to show or hide widgets on specific pages in WordPress: Dynamic Widgets, Conditional Widgets, and Restrict Widgets.

Conclusion

Hiding widget on some pages may help you to achieve some basic things like pagespeed, higher conversion rate, and better UX & UI. Hence everyone should utilize widgets visibility control feature.

If you’re already using Jetpack plugin for other features offered by the plugin. You may use Jetpack for widgets visibility control. Otherwise, it is not a good idea to use bulky (large in size) multi-feature Jetpack plugin only for widgets visibility control. In that case, you may use Widget Logic.

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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