Sidebar placement and display rules
These plugins split between creating sidebar areas and choosing where widgets appear.
- Custom Sidebars: Create flexible sidebars for custom classic widget configurations on pages or posts.
- Content Aware Sidebars: Display new sidebars on posts, pages and categories, with support for classic and block widgets.
- Widget Context: Show or hide widgets on specific posts, pages and sections. Together, these tools distinguish sidebar creation from display rules tied to page or category context.
Content, media and post-list widgets
Popular plugins cover visual editing, images, recent content and navigation within a page.
- Black Studio TinyMCE Widget: Provides a visual editor widget for WordPress.
- Image Widget: Adds image widgets using the native WordPress media manager.
- Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails: Lists recent posts with details such as titles, thumbnails, excerpts, authors, categories and dates.
- Table of Contents Plus: Automatically adds a table of contents to posts and pages, with smooth scrolling, anchor links and styling options.
Sharing, sticky elements and theme add-ons
This group extends widget use into social sharing, fixed placement and theme- or builder-specific additions.
Social Media Share Buttons & Social Sharing Icons provides share buttons and pop-up social sharing icons. Fixed Widget and Sticky Elements for WordPress focuses on fixed sticky widgets, with the plugin description positioning them as a way to draw attention and improve ad performance.
Blocksy Companion is the official companion for the Blocksy theme, with starter sites, extra features and integrations. Themesflat Addons For Elementor is installed after Elementor and focuses on support for its author’s Template Kits.
Widget category choice: broad catalog, few widely installed plugins and uneven upkeep
The catalog is broad, but only a small number of plugins reach the highest install thresholds.
There are 2,240 plugins in the category, yet only 7 have at least 100,000 installs and 35 have at least 10,000. This points to a wide catalog with a relatively small group of widely installed options.
Upkeep is uneven: 19% of plugins were updated within the last year. Blocksy Companion and Content Aware Sidebars were updated this month, while Fixed Widget and Sticky Elements for WordPress was last updated 43 months ago and PHP Code Widget 55 months ago.