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Why Remove Sidebar in WordPress Site and How You Can Do It?

Last Updated on March 27th, 2023

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A widget slot on the left, top, or bottom of your WordPress theme is known as a sidebar. Although it is beneficial, you’ll need to delete the sidebar in WordPress if you want a page/post that is widget-free. Most modern themes have a specific function to uninstall the sidebar in their settings panel; however, this tutorial is ideal for you if your theme doesn’t offer this function. 

We’ll show you how to remove sidebars in WordPress sites with easy-to-follow steps. Using the best plugins for sidebars, these methods will work with all modern, well-coded WordPress themes!

Why You May Want to Remove the Sidebar in Your WordPress Site

The WordPress sidebar is an integral part of your website. It’s a widget-ready area that appears on any page to the left, right, or below the content area. It’s usually used to display things that aren’t part of the post or page’s material but can also be used to connect to various pages on your website, such as signup forms for your email list, ads, social media profiles, and so on. 

Here’s a rundown of the most popular reasons you do not want a sidebar on your blog/website pages: 

  • You don’t want to interrupt the reading flow or divert users’ attention away from the main content of the sites by adding different parts of the content. 
  • Users are able to quickly search through the article’s key content if the blog pages are clean and tidy. 
  • You want your blog post to take up the entire screen to capture your readers’ full attention. 
  • You want to make the most of the valuable space that a sidebar takes up on a blog’s site, which isn’t always used effectively.
  • On a website or blog, the full-width layout is better for increasing interaction and conversions. 
  • Widgets aren’t needed on your blog pages. 
  • You might want to eliminate the blog sidebar for a while and run tests to see which blog design performs better and generates the most conversions.

Removing Sidebar from Static Page in WordPress 

Many WordPress themes have full-width page templates that are ready to use. These templates work for any WordPress static page and don’t have sidebars on either side of the material. 

Simply edit the page you want to delete the sidebar from and then pick the full-width template from the ‘Page Attributes’ meta box.

If this choice isn’t available, it means your theme doesn’t have a full-width page design. As a result, you’ll need to make a new full-width template. To do so, follow the instructions below:

  1. Build a new file in any text editor. Save this file to your desktop with the name full-width.php. 
  2. Using an FTP client, connect to your hosting account and navigate to the /wp-content/themes/your-theme folder. Edit the page.php file. 
  3. Copy and paste the entire contents of this file into your full-width.php file. 
  4. Add the following text after opening the ?php tag:
/*
Template Name: Full-Width Template
*/
  1. Within in the full-width.php file, you must locate the line ?php get sidebar();?> 
  2. This code creates the sidebar for your page, so you can just get rid of it. 
  3. Make a backup of your changes. 
  4. Using an FTP client, upload the full-width.php file to your child theme’s folder. 
  5. The full-width page design is now available in WordPress.

How to Remove a WordPress Sidebar from a Blog Page 

WordPress themes also have a sidebar on blog sites, which can be deleted by following the steps below: 

  1. To begin, go to Settings >> Reading and look at the Posts tab. 
  2. Go to Pages >> All Pages and edit the page you discovered in the previous move. 
  3. Update the page attribute to full-width and save your changes. 
  4. If the full-width template isn’t available, you’ll have to build it manually, just like we did with the static page.

Removing Sidebar from Single Post in WordPress

You can configure a single post to have no sidebar if you don’t want to delete sidebars from all of your blog posts. 

  1. On the left side of your dashboard, click Posts. 
  2. Choose the blog post you want to remove the sidebar from.
  3. Find Post Attributes on the right-hand side. 
  4. Select Full Width from the Template drop-down menu.
  5. To publish or update your work, click the blue Publish or Update button.

If the full-width option isn’t available, you can build a custom page template without sidebars. 

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  1. Open a text editor such as Notepad and create a new template file.
  2. In the same file, copy and paste the following code:
<?php
/*
 * Template Name: Featured Article
 * Template Post Type: post, page, product
 */
  
 get_header();  ?>

This code creates a new Featured Article template that can be used for a post, page, and product post forms.

  1. You can save this file to your desktop as wpb-single-post.php. 
  2. Then, using an FTP client, upload it to your new WordPress theme folder. 
  3. You can now edit any individual post on your website, and you’ll note a new Post Attributes meta box with a template selection feature.

Removing Sidebar Entirely in WordPress

It is recommended that you make a backup of the site and use the child theme before starting this process to avoid missing the adjustments you make when you update the theme later. 

This approach removes the sidebar entirely from your theme and can only be accomplished by editing theme files. You can access the theme files by logging directly into the WordPress dashboard, logging into the hosting provider’s File Manager, or using an FTP client.

Since the theme has several models, you’ll need to copy them all before you begin editing. Where a sidebar is present, you can edit the entire template. They can be found in index.php, home.php, archive.php, single.php, page.php, and other files in a standard theme. 

  1. Locate the template folder in the appropriate folder. Open the theme folder in wp-content/themes/theme-folder.
  2. To edit the template, copy it to the child theme folder.
  3.  Now look in the template file for the following line:
<?php get_sidebar(); ?>
  1. That is the code that creates the sidebar function and can be removed. 
  2. If your theme has several sidebars, you’ll need to look for codes that include the word “sidebar.” Consider the following scenario:
<?php get_sidebar('footer-widget-area'); ?>
  1. The footer widget is represented by the sidebar code above. Find and delete this form of code. 
  2. After you’ve saved your changes, you’ll note that the sidebar has vanished from the website. Furthermore, you’ll notice that the content width stays the same even after the sidebars are removed. 
  3. Since every theme has a default content width for images and texts, you’ll need to edit the code for the full-width content region. This can be resolved by modifying your theme’s CSS. Examine the content area to determine the CSS class that is being used to identify the specific content area. 
  4. You must now define CSS code for that specific class. Here’s an example of the CSS sample:
.content-area {
width: 100%;
margin: 0px;
border: 0px;
padding: 0px;
}
.content-area .site {
margin: 0px;
}

You’ll see the full-width content area without sidebars after you add this additional CSS to your theme.

Removing Sidebar Using a Plugin

If you don’t want to go through the above steps, you can simply use a plugin. In WordPress, many plugins can delete anything from a page to produce a blank template. You may also delete sidebars, page titles, and other elements, resulting in a full-width content area. The plugin also removes the sidebar if you just want it gone.

Custom Sidebars – Dynamic Widget Area Manager

It’s one of the best plugins and has been around for a long time with over 200,000 successful installs to date. The plugin is designed to help you manage and navigate your website’s sidebars. You’ll be able to completely configure the sidebars, including how and where they appear. If you need sidebars but want to configure them the way you like them, then this plugin is fantastic.

Price

  • The free version of the plugin installed from the WordPress repository will display advertisements in the widgets section. You can upgrade to their pro edition if you don’t want to see commercials. However, you can’t buy this plugin separately; instead, you must add Content-Aware to your product line for $49.

Steps to Remove Sidebar Using Custom Sidebars – Dynamic Sidebar Widget Area:

  • Go to your site’s dashboard, select “Plugins,” then “Add New” and type “Custom Sidebars – Dynamic Widget Area Manager” into the search box. 
  • After that, trigger the plugin by clicking the install button. 

Remove Sidebar from Individual Pages

  • Go to Sidebars -> Add New in the Admin Dashboard. 
  • Select Pages from the “Select content type” drop-down menu. 
  • Pick the pages you want to remove the sidebar from using the new input field (leave it empty for all pages). 
  • Select “Action” in the Options box. Replace the Target Sidebar you want to hide with the one you want to hide with. 
  • Give the new sidebar a name, such as Hidden Sidebar, and save it.

Remove Sidebar from Blog or Posts

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We’ll now hide the sidebar from a WordPress blog or all single posts using the same measures as before. We can reuse the previous custom sidebar (Hidden Sidebar) and add more conditions instead of making a new one. Of course, this will only work if posts and pages have the same sidebar by default.

  • Select Posts from the bottommost “Select content form” option on the Edit Sidebar screen. 
  • Fill in the blanks in the new input field. 
  • Save the file.

Go to Custom Sidebars – Dynamic Widget Area Manager

Content Aware Sidebars

Content Aware Sidebars is one of the most popular and quickest free WordPress sidebar plugins for creating widget-ready areas such as sidebars in websites. You can make any sort of sidebar you want, including post sidebars, blog sidebars, and category sidebar, amongst others. 

You can also use this plugin to display content from specific authors, date archives, taxonomy archives, content with specific tags or categories, and so on in the sidebar. 

All of the big page builders, including Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, Page Builder by SiteOrigin, Beaver Builder, Visual Composer, and others, are compatible with the plugin.

Many popular plugins, such as bbPress, BuddyPress, WooCommerce, WPML, Polylang, Easy Digital Downloads, TranslatePress, and others, are supported.

You can also delete sidebars from any custom post form, any custom classifications, and other content built with plugins using the powerful functions in Content Aware Sidebars. 

When using WPML, you can, for example, cover the sidebar on posts by a featured blogger, posts in a specific category, or multilingual sites. The bbPress forum sidebar, BuddyPress sidebar, and WooCommerce product sidebar can all be disabled.

Price

  • The Pro version of Content Aware Sidebars starts at $49/year.

Steps to remove sidebar using Content Aware Sidebar:

  • This plugin requires you to locate the segment destined for the sidebar you want to remove. We want to remove the sidebar with “Archives,” “Calendar,” and “Recent Comments”. 
  • Login to your WordPress Admin Dashboard.
  • Go to Appearance -> Widgets.
  • The sidebar section we want to apply changes to is named Sidebar for Test. It is marked with a blue line, as are all sidebars created with the Content Aware Sidebar.
  • A green button indicates that the ‘Sidebar for Test’ is being used on the site. 
  • You must deactivate ‘Sidebar for Test’ to delete the sidebar from WordPress, as shown in the image below:

After deactivating the sidebar, it’ll no longer display on the pages.

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Go to Content Aware Sidebars

Widget Disable

This easy-to-use plugin lets you disable any sidebar or dashboard widget on your current WordPress account.

Price

  • FREE

Steps to remove sidebar using Widget Disable:

  • On the left side of your dashboard, go to Plugins > Add New. 
  • Find the Widget Disable plugin and install it. 
  • Install the plugin and turn it on. 
  • Disable Widgets by going to Appearance > Disable Widgets. 
  • To remove the sidebar widgets from your website, go to the Sidebar Widgets tab and select everything. 
  • Save your changes by clicking the Save button.

Go to Widget Disable

It’s a Wrap!

The main function of a sidebar is to show information that isn’t relevant to the main page. A calendar, most recent post, most popular post, sign-up widget, advertisements, search bar, about the author, other sites, social networks, and so on may all be examples. With mobile surfing and Google taking over the internet, there isn’t always a need for a sidebar, or at least it shouldn’t be your primary focus.

The sidebar will normally switch to the bottom of the page when a person visits a website on their computer, which is fine. However, if you put items in there that don’t suit at the bottom of your page, you can either delete them or replace them with something that will work on a tablet. 

You can customize your website to look and work exactly the way you want it to using one of the methods we provided to eliminate a sidebar. We highly recommend you use plugins to get rid of your theme’s sidebars. 

Custom sidebar and widget configurations are also possible with these plugins. You should try them out and see if you can use them instead of removing the sidebar entirely. We hope you found this article useful in your quest for information about how to remove sidebars from your WordPress website!

A team of WordPress experts that love to test out new WordPress related software, WordPress plugins and WordPress themes.