Layouts

How to Show or Hide the Sidebar

By Daniel Ekay May 18, 2026 2 min read
Docs Layouts How to Show or Hide the Sidebar
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Aurora lets you control sidebar visibility independently for single posts and for archive-type pages. Both settings are checkboxes in the Customizer and apply globally across their respective page types.


Sidebar on Single Posts

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize.
  2. Open Layouts → Single Post Layout.
  3. Check or uncheck Show the sidebar in single posts.
  4. Click Publish.

Sidebar on Archives, Search, and Author Pages

  1. Go to Appearance → Customize.
  2. Open Layouts → Archive Layout.
  3. Check or uncheck Show the sidebar in archives and search page.
  4. Click Publish.

This single setting controls the sidebar across all archive-type pages: category archives, tag archives, date archives, search results, and author pages. There is no separate toggle per archive type. See archive settings for the full list of options in that panel.


What Goes in the Sidebar

The sidebar displays whatever widgets you have added to the widget area. Go to Appearance → Widgets to add, remove, or reorder sidebar widgets. If the sidebar is enabled but empty, nothing will render.

WordPress Widgets screen showing Aurora's Sidebar widget area

Per-Post and Per-Archive Overrides

The Customizer settings above are global. If you need the sidebar shown on one specific post but hidden everywhere else, or visible on one category but not others, the Nova plugin handles this. Nova adds sidebar override controls to the post editor sidebar and to the category and tag edit screens, so you can set visibility per post, per term, or per author without changing the global setting.

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