• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Feast Design Co.

WordPress Themes for Food & Lifestyle Bloggers

  • Themes
  • Feast Plugin
  • Blog
  • Support
  • Tutorials
  • Nav Social Menu

    • Email
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
menu icon
go to homepage
  • Themes
  • Feast Plugin
  • Support
  • Tutorials
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
  • search icon
    Homepage link
    • Themes
    • Feast Plugin
    • Support
    • Tutorials
    • Facebook
    • Instagram
    • Twitter
  • ×

    Home » SEO

    Modern Sidebar

    Published: Oct 23, 2020 · Modified: Apr 28, 2022 by Skylar ·

    This tutorial features the Feast Plugin, which contains theme enhancements.

    The Modern Sidebar replaces the theme's sidebar, making it simpler to customize the sidebar using the block editor, instead of widgets.

    • customize the sidebar more easily with the block editor
    • improves SEO by linking to 4 trending recipes, and 4 seasonal recipes
    • improves SEO by replacing "featured post" widgets
    • improves accessibility by replacing "featured post" widgets
    • improves user experience with better guidelines for sidebar content
    Jump to:
    • Conversion video
    • 1. Create the Modern Sidebar page
    • 2. Content
    • 3. Add the widget to the Primary Sidebar widget area
    • 4. Remove other Primary Sidebar widgets
    • Headings
    • Trending recipes
    • Seasonal content
    • Set private
    • Don't overstuff the sidebar
    • Subscribe
    • Search form
    • Categories drop down
    • White Glove

    Conversion video

    1. Create the Modern Sidebar page

    Navigate to the Feast Plugin's Settings page to automatically create the page:

    You can also manually create a new page with the "/modern-sidebar" slug by following the video above, set it to "Private" and refresh the page to apply the block editor styling. Note: doing this isn't recommended because it won't have some of our custom styling applied

    2. Content

    The sidebar should contain:

    1. an author-profile
      • this should be 300x300px and a JPG
    2. an important call-to-action
    3. trending recipes
    4. seasonal content
    5. Possibly: "As seen in"

    If you're using the Modern Homepage with a sidebar, you'll want to remove the author profile from the homepage rather than the sidebar. This is because it's important for your posts to have a user-profile in the sidebar to establish E-A-T.

    Most commonly, people are using the "Full Width Modern Homepage".

    Note that your sidebar is for supporting content and is not designed to contain critical information. The sidebar appears below the content on mobile, which is 80% of pageviews. See the page structure for recipe sites for more details.

    3. Add the widget to the Primary Sidebar widget area

    Once the sidebar has been created, head over to the widgets are and drag the "Feast Modern Sidebar" widget to the "Primary Sidebar" widget area.

    4. Remove other Primary Sidebar widgets

    You can check the sidebar on the front-end to ensure the content is loading and looks the way you'd like it to, then simply remove the other widgets from the sidebar.

    Headings

    Use only h3s in the Modern Sidebar.

    Just like the footer, the sidebar is distinguished by an h2 on your site. Any headings in the Modern Sidebar need to be an h3.

    Using anything lower than an h3 (h4, h5, h6) is completely unnecessary.

    Trending recipes

    This essentially duplicates the "trending recipes" section of the Modern Homepage.

    Seasonal content

    In addition to 4 "trending" recipes, we recommend having 4 "seasonal" recipes for upcoming holidays or events. This needs to be updated regularly, as the seasonal content or holiday changes.

    A better option is to use the "Post IDs" section of the FSRI block to select 4 specific posts to display, which doesn't require editing the posts themselves.

    Set private

    Just like the Modern Footer, this page should never be set public.

    If you've used the Feast Plugin's settings to create the modern-footer page, this is done for you.

    If you've manually created the page, you'll need to manually set the page to "Private".

    Don't overstuff the sidebar

    The goal of the Modern Sidebar isn't to replicate the homepage. Adding too much to the sidebar will slow pagespeed because of additional DOM nodes and rendering time, and do nothing for SEO.

    Keep the sidebar focused on E-A-T, promoting key content, and directing readers to a call-to-action.

    Subscribe

    You can technically insert a newsletter subscribe form using the javascript snippet provided by your newsletter service, but we don't recommend this. See: Rethinking the newsletter

    This is because they add javascript, which slows pagespeed, and often have very poor accessibility and SEO practices.

    Additionally, readers tend to simply ignore signup forms due to banner blindness and the usefulness of these are very low.

    The "Subscribe" button will be embedded into the Modern Mobile Menu so that it's always available, when the reader is ready to subscribe. This is not yet released.

    Our current recommendation is to simply link to a dedicated /subscribe page that contains the subscription forms. Details for this will be released when it's available.

    Search form

    A search form has traditionally been included in the sidebar, but is no longer necessary because it's embedded into the Modern Mobile Menu.

    On mobile, the sidebar appears below the content, which makes it almost totally invisible to 80% of your users.

    Users expect to find the search bar in the top right, or top left corner of the website. Not the sidebar.

    Categories drop down

    We removed support for this years ago but if you're still using the categories drop down, now is the time to dump it.

    See: why we're dropping support for the categories drop down menu

    White Glove

    Don't have the time, or aren't comfortable doing this yourself? Get the Modern Sidebar White Glove service.

    Primary Sidebar

    Themes

    • Feast Plugin
    • Foodie Pro Classic
    • Brunch Pro Classic
    • Cook'd Pro Classic
    • Cravings Pro Classic
    • Seasoned Pro Classic

    Feast Plugin

    • Feast Plugin
    • Modern Homepage
    • Modern Sidebar
    • Modern Footer
    • Modern Mobile Menu
    • Modern Menu
    • Modern Recipe Index
    • Modern Categories
    • Recipe Update Checklist
    • Recipe Post Template

    Resources

    • Pagespeed Audit
    • Image optimization
    • Recipe Guidelines for Foodie Bloggers
    • How to write a recipe post
    • SEO for Food Bloggers
    • Tutorials

    more resources →

    Categories

    • How to use categories
    • Category pages need content
    • How to configure the category pages
    • Food blog site structure
    • Food blog page structure
    • Simple Category Index

    Footer

    ↑ back to top

    Topics

    • Food Blog Design and Appearance
    • Productivity
    • Tech and Plugins
    • Food Blogging and Promotion
    • Minimalist WordPress Themes
    • Simple WordPress Themes

    Help

    • Documentation & Tutorials
    • Food Blogging Resources
    • Open A Support Ticket
    • Your Account
    • Subscriptions
    • Downloads
    • Discounts and Coupons
    • Compatibility

    Company

    • Subscribe to newsletter
    • Privacy Policy
    • Refund policy
    • Terms & Conditions
    • Principles and Best Practices
    • Affiliates
    • Contact

    Copyright © 2022 · Feast Design Co.

    Results not typical or guaranteed. Our themes and plugins are just a small part of the overall effort involved in running a food blog. Nothing on this website shall constitute legal or financial advice, always consult a local lawyer and accountant. Accessing this website and all transactions herein are under the laws and jurisdiction of Toronto, Ontario, Canada.