- General Sidebar -> default for homepage and all subforum pages
- Topic Sidebar -> for topic pages
A subforum is usually set up to gather all content related to one product or one service. So while the content area of a subforum only contains topics around that product / service, the sidebar is limited to showing generic widgets that usually don’t have an added value globally in the community. A lot of important real estate is lost this way.
In order to offer community users better contextual information, we propose a different approach to sidebars and therefore to the widgets that can be placed in the sidebars.
Every subforum should get its own sidebar so that the subforum page and all topic pages of this subforum have the same sidebar. Additionally, all content widgets (like "Soived topics" or "Related topics") should have an option to only show content limited to the current subforum.
This way a sidebar can be an ideal contextual addition to the content of a subforum. It can display solved topics from the subforum, it can display a custom HTML widget optimized for the product / service the subforum is about. It could also display a "featured_side" banner just for this subforum.
Example:
A community has three subforums: "iPhone", "Samsung", "Huawei". Currently the general sidebar for all three subforum pages shows exactly the same content. Also, the topic sidebar in all three subforums shows exactly the same content. So you can’t target users by displaying a banner (HTML widget) only on the "iPhone" subforum or only show solved topics regarding iPhones. You have to display this banner everywhere on the community, fully knowing it is most likely irrelevant for all users in "Samsung" and "Huawei", therefore losing this space and a huge opportunity.
With our approach there would be a sidebar only for the subforum "iPhone". You could place the banner (and other widgets) there, so it is displayed on the subforum page and all topic pages of this subforum.
We really need that. Every subcategory has a different audience and serves a different purpose. Like the example above from@bjoern_schulze we have multiple subcategories where we need to have some specific content on the side bars. I understand that there is no out of box solution, let’s start with giving us some way to customize it on our end. Hope we can make it!
Has there been any updates to this? I am building my first Insided Community, and looking for ways to use widgets and get results based on category, not overall Community activity.