Adding widgets to your WordPress website can make it more interactive and engaging. But when every widget shows up on every page, things can quickly get cluttered.
Plus, not all visitors need to see every widget, and having them everywhere can make your site harder to navigate and even slow it down. This can hurt your website’s usability and overall performance.
Over the last 16+ years of using WordPress, we’ve tested many ways to organize widgets effectively without creating extra problems. Along the way, we’ve faced challenges like performance issues and confusing navigation caused by too many widgets in all the wrong places.
After a lot of trial and error, we finally found a way to control where your widgets appear. Using the right method, you can easily show or hide widgets on specific pages, creating a cleaner and more personalized experience.
In this article, we’ll guide you through the steps to take full control of your widgets in WordPress.
Why Show or Hide Widgets on WordPress Pages?
WordPress widgets allow you to add additional content to your site’s sidebar, footer, and header. They make important site components, like a contact form, social media buttons, sales offers, or your most valuable pages, more visible to visitors.
For example, displaying a search box widget on the checkout page of your online store doesn’t provide any benefit to your visitors. But showing discount coupons for products and services in the widget area can increase your sales.
Similarly, you may want to keep your homepage clean and reduce distractions. Hiding widgets on the homepage will keep it clutter-free and increase user engagement on your WordPress website.
Sadly, WordPress doesn’t offer an option to show or hide widgets by default. That said, you can still display widgets on specific pages using a WordPress plugin.
In the next section, we will show you how to show or hide your WordPress widgets on specific pages. Here’s an overview of all the topics we will cover in this guide:
Let’s start!
Showing/Hiding WordPress Widgets on Specific Pages
You can easily hide or show widgets on specific pages using Widget Options. It’s a complete widget-management plugin that helps you assign and restrict widgets for different pages, posts, and devices.
Note: If you use a block theme, Widget Options will convert your block-based widget areas into classic widget areas. Then, you will be able to use the plugin to show/hide widgets across your site.
To get started, you’ll first need to install and activate the Widget Options plugin. For more details, please see our step-by-step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Upon activation, you can head to Settings » Widget Options from the WordPress admin sidebar. Then, you’ll find different options the plugin offers to customize your widgets.
Before everything else, make sure that the ‘Classic Widgets Screen’ option is enabled.
This makes sure that you can hide or show widgets on your website.
After that, you’ll want to find the ‘Pages Visibility’ section and click the ‘Configure Settings’ button.
From here, you can control where your widgets will be visible and choose where you don’t want to display them.
By default, the plugin will already have the post types tab, taxonomies tab, and miscellaneous tab options enabled. However, you can uncheck the box for any option to customize the visibility of widgets on different pages.
When you have made the changes, simply click the ‘Save Settings’ button.
Now, you’ll want to head to Appearance » Widgets from your WordPress admin sidebar. Then, simply click on any widget you want to show or hide. This will expand the widget settings, and you’ll see options for widget visibility.
Under the ‘Hide/Show’ dropdown menu, you can select the relevant option: ‘Hide on checked page’ or ‘Show on checked pages’.
By default, the widget will be hidden on the checked pages, but you can change that to show widgets on the checked pages instead.
Next, let’s see the configuration options for the ‘Hide/Show’ feature. Under the dropdown, you’ll find three tabs. They are the ‘Pages,’ ‘Post Types,’ and ‘Taxonomies’ tabs.
The ‘Pages’ tab provides options to hide/show widgets on the home/front page, blog section, archives, 404 pages, and search page. Go ahead and choose a page.
After that, you can go to the ‘Post Types’ tab and choose which pages you want to hide/show the WordPress widget.
Then, go ahead and switch to the ‘Taxonomies’ tab and select categories to hide or show your WordPress widgets. This means the widget will be displayed or hidden for the blog posts in that specific WordPress category.
Once done, don’t forget to click the ‘Save’ button so you don’t lose your progress.
You can now visit your website to see it in action.
For this tutorial, we have only displayed the ‘Search’ widget on the ‘Blog’ page and hidden it on all the other pages on our WordPress website.
Bonus Tip: Remove Inactive Widgets in WordPress
To go a step further, you may want to remove inactive widgets.
Especially if you’ve recently switched your WordPress theme, then you might have noticed some widgets being moved to the ‘Inactive Widgets’ section. This happens because the new theme doesn’t have widget areas that match those widgets.
These inactive widgets can clutter your site, so it’s a good idea to clean them up. To do this, head over to Appearance » Widgets in your WordPress dashboard and scroll down to the ‘Inactive Widgets’ section.
From there, simply click the ‘Clear Inactive Widgets’ button to remove them permanently.
For detailed instructions, check out our tutorial on removing inactive widgets in WordPress.
We hope this article helped you learn how to show or hide widgets on specific WordPress pages. Next, you may also want to see our list of the most useful WordPress widgets or read our guide on how to use a visual editor to create widgets in WordPress.
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