I have recently been playing around with my sidebar on my blog.

I thought I would ask you your opinions on what should be in the sidebar? What should not be in the sidebar? What sites do you think have good sidebars?

Basically anything sidebar related.

On ProTycoon.com I currently have:
Sponsors
Recent Posts
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Top Commentators
My Money Makers

Depends on the blog.

However, in general, the less the better IMO. (As most blogs also have a top nav bar). The thinner the sidebar is, the more screen-space your primary content gets.

I think it depends on your goals. I don't think the sidebar automatically needs to be thinner. You should make sure you have space for your content, but it's more about emphasizing what you want people to see.

I'm not sure any blog gets the sidebar perfect. There are a lot of choices you can make about what goes there and you seem to be using many of the common sidebar elements.

You might ask yourself why each is there, what purpose each is serving, and how it attempts to further your overall goals. You can also test what's in there. If no one ever clicks the links in the popular posts remove them and either try something else or reclaim the space.

Cheers vangogh

I think I might do a little research on this, can feel another blog post coming on!

Tr

Originally Posted by davidshaw

I have recently been playing around with my sidebar on my blog.

I thought I would ask you your opinions on what should be in the sidebar? What should not be in the sidebar? What sites do you think have good sidebars?

Basically anything sidebar related.

On ProTycoon.com I currently have:
Sponsors
Recent Posts
Categories x 2
Top Commentators
My Money Makers

Try to add:
Popular Blog Post (based on your blog stat)
Tags / Tag Cloud

Not so many widgets, I'd say. I just did a redesign of my website and here are the important things:

1. Recent posts or archives of some sort
2. SEARCH function (a must!)
3. RSS subscribe function (also a must)
4. Blogroll (optional but recommended... speaking of which, feel free to add me, heh)
5. Information about yourself (reinforces trust as it makes the blog more transparent and the author seem more real)

Check out my blog for an example of #5.

Cheers Tamar

I am already in the process of a blogroll! - Will definitely add a link to you!

Search is something that I am going to add as well!

I seem to find it hard to write about myself, but need to get that done soon!

Cheers

A blogroll is one thing I haven't added and haven't really decided how best to add. I read and would recommend a lot of different blogs, but the list would grow way to long. I wouldn't want to cut it down to a few either since it would be too hard to have to decide where the line should be of who's in and out.

I do want to link out to other blogs though. What I've thought I might do is create a dedicated page to all or most of the feeds I read and then maybe leave a short list in the sidebar with a link to the dedicated page.

I have been trying to decide what blogs to link to, which to leave out. It is a very difficult process, for something that sounds very simple.

Originally Posted by vangogh

A blogroll is one thing I haven't added and haven't really decided how best to add. I read and would recommend a lot of different blogs, but the list would grow way to long. I wouldn't want to cut it down to a few either since it would be too hard to have to decide where the line should be of who's in and out.

I do want to link out to other blogs though. What I've thought I might do is create a dedicated page to all or most of the feeds I read and then maybe leave a short list in the sidebar with a link to the dedicated page.

I'm planning on writing a post on recommended reads -- I definitely have a lot more blogs on my reading list that don't show up on my blogroll.

Maybe it's strange, but I would feel bad including some people and not others and I'm trying to figure out what the best to handle a blogroll would be.

I do plan on creating a dedicated page for most of the feeds I'm subscribed to, but I would still like to have a small blogroll in the sidebar.

I am thinking about doing a small script that changes the links that are showed, so only 10 show up on a random basis. But this might not be the best solution!