Side Content

This plugin provides similar functionality to the Drupal Side Content module.

It enables you to define a set of widgets which are effectively placeholders. Each one is empty until you assign content
to it when editing a page.
This enables you to extend the content of the page into the sidebar.

Suppose, for example, you have a set of pages about people in your company. You could use a side content
widget to add a biography for each of them, or a photo, or to list their favourite pizza toppings.

You can use the plugin without any template changes at all, but it does provide a simple API so you can test for the presence of side content widgets and adjust your templates accordingly.

As of release 0.7 of the plugin, it supports the WP shortcode API. There is also an extra add-on plugin which provides the same support for NextGEN Gallery shortcodes (development sponsored by Comunicrea s. n. c.).

Release 0.75 fixes a bug affecting side content widgets with names containing characters other than lowercase alphanumerics. A new contributed extension provides integration with the qTranslate plugin.

Release 0.8 adds no new functionality but makes the plugin compatible with WP 2.7.
Release 0.9 adds no new functionality but makes the plugin compatible with WP 2.8.1.
Release 1.0 adds no new functionality but makes the plugin compatible with WP 4.1.0.

API

Use the following code to test for the presence of side content widgets:

<?php if(function_exists('the_side_content') && the_side_content()->has_widgets() :?>

Use the following code to test for the presence of a particular side content widget called ‘widget name’:

<?php if(function_exists('the_side_content') && the_side_content()->has_widgets('widget name') :?>

The plugin defines a filter, ‘side_content’, which can be used to preprocess side content widgets before display.