One of the many things that I love about WordPress is widget areas.
These clever little areas allow you to drag and drop your widgets into them, add text, graphics, links or whatever takes your fancy and hit save… that’s my kind of coding. Quick, clean and easily customised.

But did you know that the Divi Booster plugin allows you to create two widget areas with just a couple of mouse clicks?
The areas are: sticky widget area to left of screen and widget area below the navigation links and in this post I’ll be looking at how to activate and populate these two widget areas and… I’ll give you a few ideas on how you might use them.

Divi Booster’s two widget areas in action

Let’s start by looking at the two widget areas in action. The areas are called: sticky widget area to left of screen and widget area below the navigation links and that’s exactly what they are.

The screenshot below show both widget areas in action on a page from my local Divi theme install:

I’ve used both widget areas just to demonstrate where they are and what they look like and this is what I used to add content to them:

Setting up the “sticky widget area to left of screen”

In order to setup this widget area you have to activate it and then add a widget to the area in order for it to show on your pages and posts.

Activating the widget area

To activate the widget area, from your WordPress dashboard go to Appearance > Divi Booster and under the Layout tab click the checkbox next to Add “sticky” widget area to left of screen.
Hit save and the widget area is activated.

The widget area in the WordPress dashboard

Now go to your widget area via Appearance > Widgets and a new widget area called “Sticky” Sidebar (Left) will have been added to your widget area.

Drag a widget into the new widget area, add your content to the widget, hit save and you’re all done.

In my demo I added the Awesome Weather Widget, set the weather for where I live and styled it with a little CSS.

Setting up the “widget area below the navigation links”

Again we use the two step process in order to setup this widget area: activate it and then add a widget to the area in order for it to show on your pages and posts.

Activating the widget area

To activate the widget area, from your WordPress dashboard go to Appearance > Divi Booster and under the Header / Main Header tabs click the checkbox next to Add new widget area below the navigation links.
Hit save and the widget area is activated.

The widget area in the WordPress dashboard

Now go to your widget area via Appearance > Widgets and a new widget area called Header will have been added to your widget area.

Drag a widget into the new widget area, add your content to the widget, hit save and you’re all done.

In my demo I used a WordPress text widget, added my text plus a little html to create links and syled the links and width of the widget area with a little CSS.

A few ideas on how to use the Divi Booser widget areas

Now that you know how easy it is to activate and add content to these two widget areas, it’s time to think about what you might put in them.

I’m sure that your imagination is way better than mine, but just in case it’s been a long hard day and you’re feeling a bit jaded, here are a few ideas to get the creative juices flowing:

Those are just a few of the things that you can use these widget areas for and as you can see, some of the ideas can be used in either area.
You can use any of the above or you can use something that is more site specific for your particular content.

What is a “Sticky” Widget Area?
If you take a look at this one by ytravel you’ll see a group of social media buttons on the left of the page. The buttons are initially located just below the header, but if you scroll down the page their position becomes fixed so that they stay on the screen at all times.

This is basically what a sticky widget area does. It gives you a place to put widgets that you want to stay in place on the screen as you scroll down. This is great for keeping social media icons on display or you could include a bio, a newsletter signup or details of a limited time offer.
Dan Mossop – Divi Booster developer

Add WordPress widget power to your site with the Divi Booster plugin

If you’re a Divi theme user and you’d like to add a little WordPress widget power to your website, then head over to Dan’s site and download your copy of the Divi Booster plugin.

The plugin is $15 and if you subscribe to his mailing list you’ll get a 35% discount until the end of Feb 2015 (20% thereafter).
You can install it on all of your own sites and on all of your client’s sites and with free updates for life you’ll get all the new options as soon as they’re added!

Q – Can I use it on more than one site? What about my clients’ sites?

A – Yes! Divi Booster is licensed for personal and developer use on unlimited sites. This means you can install it on any or all of your own sites, and on any or all of your client’s sites. But please don’t share your copy of Divi Booster with others, or make it available online.

I hope that you enjoyed the post and if you have any thoughts about what you could use these widget areas for, please leave a comment and if you’d like to spread the word about this fabulously clever plugin, please use my social sharing icons below.

Credits:
My thanks and gratitude to Dan Mossop for producing such a great plugin, for his help and assistance in completing this post and his ongoing development of the Divi Booster plugin.