How to Create a Collapsible Sidebar Menu in WordPress (The Easy Way)

A collapsible sidebar menu is a great way to provide easy access to important links and content while keeping your website’s design clean and organized.

This feature allows users to expand and collapse the menu, giving them control over their browsing experience.

We’ve noticed that many large websites, eCommerce stores, and sites with more complex layouts use it to make navigation easier.

In this article, we will show you how to easily create a collapsible sidebar menu in WordPress.

What Is a Collapsible Sidebar Menu? (And When to Use One)

The most user-friendly menus provide easy access to all the links that visitors need. However, this can be tricky for WordPress websites that have lots of pages or a more complex layout. 

Think about a large eCommerce store that has tons of product categories and subcategories, such as Amazon. 

Displaying every single product category in a standard menu wouldn’t be a good idea. Shoppers would likely need to scroll through the menu to find the category they’re interested in. 

This is where collapsible menus come in. These menus organize content in a ‘parent-child’ approach. That means if the visitor clicks on a parent item in a collapsible menu, then it will expand to display all of that parent item’s child content. 

One example of this is the Guardian news outlet, which uses a collapsible menu for its mobile site.

Collapsible sidebar menus are sometimes also called expandable menus. This is because their different sections expand when a visitor clicks on them. 

By default, collapsible menus hide a lot of content and complexity from visitors. This is much more user-friendly than scrolling through a long list of categories and subcategories on your WordPress blog.

That said, let’s take a look at how you can easily create a collapsible sidebar menu on your WordPress site.

How to Create a Collapsible Sidebar Menu in WordPress

You can create a collapsible sidebar menu in WordPress using the Bellows Accordion Menu plugin.

It provides a handy shortcode to place your collapsible menu on any page, post, or widget area, including your sidebar.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the Bellows Accordion Menu plugin. If you need help, then please see our beginner’s guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Upon activation, visit the Appearance » Menus page in your WordPress dashboard. 

To start, type a name for your menu into the ‘Menu Name’ field. Note that your site visitors won’t see this name since it’s for your own reference only.

You can then click on the ‘Create Menu’ button. 

Next, choose the pages you want to add to the collapsible sidebar menu. By default, WordPress displays your most recent pages only.

If you want to see a list of all your website’s pages, then click on the ‘View All’ tab. 

Alternatively, you can click on ‘Select All’. This will add all of your pages to the collapsible menu.

Once you are happy with your selection, click on the ‘Add to Menu’ button. You can also select posts and blog categories or add custom links. For more details, please see our guide on how to add a navigation menu in WordPress.

After adding all of your different web pages to the menu, you can move them around by dragging and dropping them. This will change the order these pages appear in your collapsible menu. 

Collapsible menus are all about parent-child relationships.

When a visitor clicks a parent item in your collapsible menu, it will expand to reveal all of the child content.

To create this relationship, simply use drag and drop to arrange all of your child’s pages beneath their parent.

Next, grab each child and drag it a little to the right. You can then release this page. This will indent the item and turn it into a child page. 

Don’t forget to click the ‘Save Menu’ button when you are finished.

Now, we want to add this collapsible menu to the WordPress sidebar. To do this, we will use some shortcodes that Bellows Accordion creates automatically. 

To get the shortcode, go to the Appearance » Bellows Menu page from the WordPress dashboard. If it isn’t already selected, then make sure you select the ‘Show All’ tab.

You can now click on the Shortcode box, which should highlight all of the code. Now, copy this code using either the Command + c or Ctrl + c keyboard shortcut. 

The next step is pasting this shortcode into a widget, so head over to the Appearance » Widgets page from the admin area.

This will display all of the widget areas within your current theme. The options you see may vary, but most modern WordPress themes feature a sidebar.

Once you’ve found the sidebar area, give it a click. This section will now expand.

To add a block, click on the + icon and start typing ‘Shortcode.’ When it appears, select the ‘Shortcode’ block. 

Now, simply paste your collapsible menu shortcode into this block. To publish your menu, you’ll need to click on the ‘Update’ button at the top of your screen. 

Now, when you visit your site, you should see a new collapsible sidebar menu. 

The Bellows Accordion plugin also makes it super easy to customize this default menu. For example, you might change its color scheme to better reflect your site’s branding. 

If you want to tweak the default menu, simply go to the Appearance » Bellows Menu page in your WordPress dashboard. 

This menu has all the settings you need to customize your collapsible menu. There are a lot of settings to explore. However, you may want to start by going to Main Configuration » Basic Configuration.

Here, you can switch between several different menu colors. You can also choose whether visitors can expand multiple submenus at once using the ‘Accordion Folding’ settings. 

To change the menu’s alignment and width, click on the ‘Layout & Position’ tab.

If you’d prefer to preview your changes in real-time, then you can edit the collapsible sidebar menu in the WordPress Customizer.

To do this, head over to the Appearance » Customize page from the admin area and select the ‘Bellows’ tab from the left column.

Here, you’ll find lots of different settings for your sidebar. These include changing its width, alignment, and the color of your collapsible sidebar menu. 

Bonus: WordPress Sidebar Tricks to Get Maximum Results

Once you have created a collapsible sidebar menu, you can use some other tips to generate more leads with the help of your sidebar.

For example, you can make your sidebar widget sticky so that it is visible on the page even as the user scrolls down.

Other than that, you can add a contact form or email sign-up form in your sidebar to build your email list. To do this, you can use WPForms, which is the best contact form plugin on the market.

At WPBeginner, we use it to create contact forms and annual surveys, and we love it. To learn more, see our full WPForms review.

You will simply need to create a form and then add it to your sidebar using the WPForms block in the block menu.

For more details, you can see our tutorial on how to create a contact form in WordPress.

Additionally, you can display your most popular posts in the sidebar, add images, show social media icons, and display social proof. This will encourage users to explore your site more and boost your conversions.

For more tips, you can see our list of the best WordPress sidebar tricks to get maximum results.

Video Tutorial

If you don’t prefer written instructions, then just watch our video tutorial.

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We hope this article helped you learn how to create a collapsible sidebar menu in WordPress. For more tips on editing your WordPress site design, you can also go through our guides on how to customize your WordPress header and the most useful WordPress widgets for your site. 

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