The Death of the Sidebar
You already know how I feel about the widget overload that are raping the blogosphere. If you don’t, read the post, or get the gist of it by my wordings - not too hard, eh?
Well, the widgets are one reason I think the sidebar is dead as a resource on a blog.
Don’t get me wrong here, the sidebar still works for search fields, category listings, subscribe options (although I doubt they’re ideal there), and advertising. But for actual content, services, promoting valuable stuff on your blog, and so on, sorry - it’s dead.
The reason is that they’re too crowded, with widgets and the need to cram in everything at once.
Why would you want to do that? Do you wear five T-shirts and nine caps when going out? No, you take what fits together and leave the rest in the closet.
The sidebar should be the same.
By not keeping the sidebar clean and useful for your readers, you’re effectively teaching them not to look at it. So you have a great blogroll, links that are really valuable for your visitors. Good for you! Too bad nobody’ll see it since it’s in the sidebar, and they’ve long wearied of its clutter of crap, no matter how useful it is.
This isn’t just your fault. The blogosphere is full of sidebars containing one-time things (subscribe buttons comes to mind), long category listings, and ads. Not counting the accursed widgets of course…
Let’s face it. We’re used to surf the blogosphere looking at content, avoiding the clutter of the sidebar.
I just realized it’s gone so far that I momentarily were stunned by a “that’s good design” moment when checking in on Skelliewag - a clean and sober site with an un-cluttered sidebar. Honestly, it looks good but it’s nothing special - the pure fact that the sidebar wasn’t full of crap made it feel a lot better. It almost went as far as to cloud my eyes for other design problems, but that’s for another day and post…
My point is, most sidebars are wasted blog real estate, and you want to use it. So do that, but make sure your sidebar only contains the necessities. Like Speedvine did and pointed out in a comment here on Wisdump. The two sidebars feels clean and warranted, so I don’t mind it, will even look at the links - or would if I gave a damn about cars at least. Sure, there are problems here, especially with the “Forumroll” heading which I don’t think is as obvious as it should be, but it’s a great resource and if it were presented with some descriptive text it would be obvious how to use as well. And lo, there’s a sidebar worth looking at!
Is your sidebar worth looking at, and what are you doing to get your readers interested in it?
Related reading:
most widgets have a function, show the music the peson is listening to, who visited the site, etc. this is more interesting than your long list of categories and the useless network list. and your image ads are much more anoying than any widget.
sidebars get a new function, they are not dead.
skelliewag: why are there two sidebars, one would be enough. drop one under the other.
and here the sidebar does not give any real information!
By larissa on November 23, 2007 4:07 am
Who needs a sidebar?
By georg on November 23, 2007 4:52 am
In the last year I haven’t once interacted with the sidebar here.
By Jeremy Wright on November 23, 2007 12:08 pm
Prior to publishing this article, why don’t you first redesign your layout to not use a sidebar?
By Father Dom on November 23, 2007 12:38 pm
For the record, I have not made this design. I will, however, be doing the new version, which of course will be subject to lots of pointy remarks in the comments when I say something controversial, or just don’t do as I live. It should be a fun ride for everyone!
And Jeremy, I can understand that. A follow-up though. Have you taken in what’s in it? Do you, for instance, glance at the ads to the left when reading this comment?
By Thord Daniel Hedengren on November 23, 2007 9:28 pm
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By Joseph Cizek | Sidebar Quality on November 23, 2007 11:36 pm
Yes, we look at the ads. Nobody is perfect.
By Dake on November 24, 2007 4:51 am