How to allow editing of text in sidebar?

There are two ways to see it:

  1. Sidebar as a general area of site layout
  2. Sidebar as container, filled with WordPress widgets

Or maybe combination of the two.

The prime reason to use WordPress widgets is that they provide roughly consistent experience, can be easily used multiple times, and can be enhanced with related functionality (such as conditional/contextual display).

The prime reason not to is that they are somewhat inconvenient to code, let users go too wild, and are painful to easily manage state of (no version control for whatever users configured up and such).

Accordingly there is a choice how to treat that information in your case, depending on your priorities:

  1. You could provide a custom widget and let users use it. If they are already proficient with WordPress widgets then there will be minimal overhead for them to figure it out. See Widgets API.

  2. You could provide a theme settings page and include editable data there, controlling how is it output by code. This will put you in more control over display, rather than users. See Settings API.

Related Posts:

  1. How can I use the built in WordPress “browse link” functionality?
  2. Code for Recent Posts Widget
  3. Modifying the default search widget
  4. Prevent widgets removal
  5. Is there a way to add more tags to the tag cloud?
  6. Modify recent post sidebar to show post thumbs with out plugins
  7. How to build widget with arrays inside arrays?
  8. How do I save data from submitted form from widget
  9. Why Can’t wp_editor Be Used in a Custom Widget?
  10. Add div class to only one widget
  11. How to use control_callback when creating a widget via functions.php or plugin?
  12. Disable default WordPress widgets in sidebar
  13. Updating to Version 4.5 bumped my “main sidebar” widget out of place
  14. How can I delete all inactive widgets?
  15. Call sidebar from a template
  16. Adding classes to dynamic sidebar
  17. Widget Area: Modify $param[‘xy’] from widget-$n
  18. Need help adding additional controls to a custom widget
  19. Why do none of my widgets have a title?
  20. Defer Code in Widgets – Page Speed
  21. Where are widget configurations stored?
  22. Adding a widget to a string of HTML
  23. How to add a class to a link in text editor
  24. WordPress widget new instance creates content duplicates
  25. Remove/Add widgets from/to the Available Widgets pool
  26. Remove/Unregister or hide a widget added by a plugin
  27. Check if widget is active
  28. Radio buttons in widget not saving
  29. How to check if a widget has no title
  30. AJAX Contact Form Issue
  31. Including PHP files doesn’t work outside of Localhost
  32. Display sidebar only if it has content
  33. Post-specific widgets in WordPress ‘Twenty Fourteen’ theme
  34. Excluding specific widgets from default sidebar class
  35. How to truncate titles in Recent Posts widget?
  36. Can WordPress Read Its Own RSS Feed?
  37. Can’t see widget areas in my customizer
  38. Debug errors on sidebar
  39. Dynamic sidebar based on category
  40. Widget textarea input gets formatted
  41. Show widget differently depending on if it’s in the sidebar or footer
  42. Get posts after today (upcoming events)
  43. How to pass data from page to widget functions?
  44. Adding a rich text editor to a widget – specifically CKEditor
  45. Is it possible to display tag cloud widget by category?
  46. Widget page is missing from menu and default widgets are not showing
  47. wp_editor in widget breaks after save (no buttons and visual tab broken)
  48. How to use a dropdown to populate a list of post from CPT
  49. Access Customizer widget instance form
  50. Allow shortcode for custom widget
  51. Registering a stylesheet inside my WordPress widget
  52. is_tax() not working in Widget Logic [closed]
  53. How to position custom dashboard widgets on side column
  54. One register_sidebar function works, the other doesn’t?
  55. WordPress widget title coding
  56. Modify WordPress widgets Screen
  57. What does apply_filters() do exactly? [duplicate]
  58. How do I remove/reset all current widgets from the database?
  59. what is the difference between these two types of widget form method
  60. Change Woocommerce Product Categories Widget ‘Title’ based on Product Category
  61. Shortcode into widget
  62. How to show avatar of current logged in user in a widget
  63. Got a problem with a widget
  64. Widget control – putting a slideshow in the widget area
  65. Extending the WordPress Recent Posts Widget
  66. How to paste widget to a specific page
  67. How do I find out which
  68. How to update a widget data?
  69. An archive widget, coming from nowhere on my posts and pages
  70. custom widget not saved to sidebar
  71. When editing in block editor, the post/article gets under the floating widgets
  72. Recently changed domain name. Home page widgets are now not in the customize menu yet still being on the page
  73. Make widget with media upload repeatable
  74. Is it possible to dynamically output the name of the widgets?
  75. How can I write this code snippet so that it echo’s the response when submitting empty fields?
  76. What is the difference between widget object and widget instance?
  77. Apply two different styles to Wiget Titles along with a decorative line
  78. Widget text color change
  79. Widget to embed youtube video
  80. Can I use wp_widget_rss_output to show my site’s feed in the dashboard?
  81. How to make featured area?
  82. Checking if widget has title not working
  83. wp_list_categories + widget
  84. How can I add widgets to the category page?
  85. Remove default WordPress widgets
  86. Disable wordpress widget automatically on error
  87. Can I add a widget to the of my site?
  88. Widget dynamically add new input field
  89. How to show widget in frontend?
  90. Widget Development – Displaying dropdown content
  91. How do I stop out of stock items from appearing on my WooCommerce site when using the Layered Nav widget [closed]
  92. Single Widget Multi Sidebar
  93. An issue with register_sidebar and the admin interface
  94. page url in shortcode
  95. iframe/embed vid in text widget loads outside container and moves around when scrolling the page?
  96. Widget on home page displays wrong time compared to same widget on inside pages
  97. Widget logic not working
  98. Widgets in PHP files?
  99. Text Widget Not Working
  100. Sample widget code which get data(1-5 record) from Wp_Admin panel and display to Homepage(WordPress Custom Theme)