Floating elements that sticks to your screen as you scroll tend to have a higher click through and conversion rate than static objects. This is why many websites make use of floating elements through out their website. We have seen elements like header bar, footer bar, sidebar widget with newsletter optin, etc. In the past we showed you how to create a sticky floating footer bar in WordPress like we are using on WPBeginner. In this article, we will show you how to create a sticky floating sidebar widget in WordPress, so you can make your email newsletter stand out even more.
Note: This works for all type of sidebar widgets, not just your email optins. You can use it for product promotions, popular posts, flickr photos, google calendar, and basically anything else that you like.
Video Tutorial
If you don’t like the video or need more instructions, then continue reading.
First thing you need to do is install and activate the Q2W3 Fixed Widget (Sticky Widget) plugin. After activating the plugin, go to Appearance » Widgets and click on the widget that you want to make sticky. The plugin adds a Fixed Widget option in all of your widgets. Check the Fixed widget box and save changes. Go to your live site and scroll down. Your fixed widget will now be a sticky floating widget.
Sticky Widget plugin comes with options to configure the positioning of the fixed widgets. Go to Appearance » Fixed Widget Options to configure the plugin. On this page you can set the margins, add your own HTML IDs and even disable the fixed widgets on phone and tablets.
Sticky floating sidebar widgets can be used to boost sign ups, showcase content, and increase overall user loyalty. You can have multiple fixed widgets in a sidebar. However, these could easily get annoying and can have an adverse affect too. Keep a balance in your design, so you don’t frustrate your users.
We hope that this article helped you implement a sticky floating sidebar widget in your WordPress website. You can put a sticky footer bar, a sticky top navigation, and a sidebar widget. Which one would you rather use on your website? Let us know in your comments below.
It used to work for me. Now it does not work for my website.
great vid thanks for sharing
How about the whole sidebar?
Well after working for hours last night and hours today I came across this plugin thinking that I have finally got the answer to sticky sidebar widgets. But no – when I installed the plugin it did absoutely nothing! I have the latest version of WP and a good working template that has no other problems working with all the other plugins so I have no idea why this will not work.
Does anybody know how to get this plugin to work. I have just about given up on having fixed widgets. I have not won any lotteries lately to afford a developer to do it for me.
Nice tutorial. Thanks!
ALL YOU GUYS DO IS USE PLUGINS FOR EVERY SOLUTION YOU PROPOSE! Please Change the titles of posts like this to: “How to Add a Sticky Floating Sidebar Widget in WordPress with Plugins”, as you are not actually “creating” anything. you’re just using a service someone else built.
Our users are mostly beginners with little to no coding skills at all. Using a plugin is the safest way for them to add functionality in WordPress. From time to time we do publish articles with plugins as well as manual methods to achieve some functionality. But if we feel that manual method is too complicated for our target audience, then we show the plugin method alone. You may also want to take a look at our guide on how many plugins should you install on your WordPress site.
I don’t care if they use plugins for achieving the promised result.
What I don’t like is finding that the plugins are outdated or the creator stopped updating it.
So, what I would say is: please update your content and offer new options, or put a note explaining that it is an old plugin and may not work.
I think I smell a troll….if you don’t like their content, their are literally thousands of other sites around the web to do your “research”.
It stucks the smooth scrolling of the website.. So I would say – it’s a NO use plugin. You can feel the difference when once you uninstall them
Yeah because people who “create” do it without using anything else, just out of thin air! Everyone else deserves no respect.
Fantastically helpful – as always, tutorials extremely clear and easy to follow and incredibly useful. Very many thanks.
Thanks for articled and the Good guides as usual , just wonderting if there is any alternatives as this plugin was not updated 2 years now and causinfg some conflict
Same problem here. It would be great with an update to this article. I am looking around for a similar plugin but there are only a few other options and the alternatives only focus fixed sidebars and not widgets.
I really enjoyed the Q2W3 fixed widget but unfortunately it is no longer maintained.
Hey guys,
I also need this plug-in for one of my blogs, but I can’t get it to work with the Genesis theme. I just updated to the latest version that they released a couple of days ago. So I did play with the settings of the plug-in, changed the margins to different values, marked and unmarked the 4 tick-offs but it won’t work. Yes I did tick-off “fix” widget on the particular widget I want to stick. What happens is at the very bottom of my page it says:
jQuery(document).ready(function(){ var q2w3_sidebar_1_options = { “sidebar” : “sidebar-alt”, “margin_top” : 110, “margin_bottom” : 120, “screen_max_width” : 0, “width_inherit” : true, “widgets” : [‘execphp-4’] }; q2w3_sidebar(q2w3_sidebar_1_options); setInterval(function () { q2w3_sidebar(q2w3_sidebar_1_options); }, 940); });
Any help would be of great help – you can email me if you want me to show you my blog, as I don’t want to paste it here so it looks as if I am looking for a backlink
Thanks in advance for any advice you might share
Does anyone know any alternatives to this plugin? It causes all kinds of issues with the Divi and Extra themes by Elegant Themes. Bugs were reported to the dev months ago but they seem to have gone un-fixed. Time to find an alternative… suggestions?
Conflicted with the Total WordPress theme when using the built-in sticky header in Total. When Fixed Widget was active on a page, it caused the sticky header NOT to work so my header scrolled off the page. I reported the bug to author.
Is it compatible with Thesis ?
thank you bro, the plugin works like charm, this article really helpful
Awesome! works like a charm. Thanks for sharing.
Can you make it scroll then at the bottom have it become part of the footer? For example on this page. When you get down to the widget section have it stop and be at the top of the widgets?
Similar to how this site did there quote section. When you get to the bottom it becomes part of the footer.
Hey there,
Unfortunately I can not get it to work.
How do I do exactly what you did on your page?
So I would like to have a banner on the bottom end of the Page with a Text in it.
Also I would like it not to show up on the phone. What is the pixel-number for that?
Thank you!
Thank you so much for the tutorial. I had been seeing this around the web and wondered how to accomplish the same effect. The margin bottom option worked GREAT because it was also getting into the footer! You guys are awesome!
I was in search of this Thanks wpbeginner for your help. But I have one confusion. Let’s say I want to fix the top widget. But when I did it and scrolled down, it just hided the other one which was not in the position as I wanted. Can you help me for this? Like let’s suppose when I completely scroll down the page, after all widgets, then it should start being fixed. Is that possible?
Thanks.
Great, thanks. I just got my WordPress site off their domain and on to my own – so now I can even use all these great plugins. I’ll surely try this out sooner or later.
I need this to work with css and shortcodes. Planning on making a version to support this?
the plugin works only for text widget, not on my custom widgets, any idea why? thanks
I tried to combine this with the ad inserter plug in and it did not work. It does not allow for the option to make ad widget sticky. Any suggestions on a fix or work around?
Thanx Bro
This is a realy great post, thanks
For me not working -.- ;(
Hi, thanks … this plugin is working.
Hi, love the plugin, but it breaks my slideshows in my woothemes. They won’t load anymore. Is there a solution for this maybe?
This could be a bug, you can report it at the plugin’s support forum
I have tried this plugin on my website. But its not working
is there any alternative to this plugin?
Thanks for sharing the info. about this plugin. Really made it a smooth sailing on my blog.
Worked like a charm.
Hi I have had this plugin for a while and it works great but whenever there is a page that is shorter than my sidebar, when you try to scroll down the sticky widget which I have gets all fidgety and doesn’t let you scroll down to the bottom. Does anyone know how to fix this?
Do you have an example of that page? Can you send us an email about it Grant, so we can take a look.
Is it OK to make Adsense ads sticky? I mean if I place Adsense ad code in a widget and make it sticky will it violate the TOS?
No that is not allowed by Adsense. The wording is tricky. They will allow it if the sidebar remains static and the content is the one that is scrolling. So if you have two scroll bars like The Next Web design has, then you can do it.
Hi, could you could point out where, in terms of AdSense is explicitly stated that this is illegal? I haven’t found a word about it. 9gag and many others still using this kind of floating block.
Like we said earlier the wording is tricky, and in some situations you may be able to pull it off. But for smaller publishers it is always better to be safe than sorry.
I don’t understand, you said: “They will allow it if the sidebar remains static and the content is the one that is scrolling”
Isn’t that exactly what we are trying to do here? Display AdSense in a static sidebar widget, and have our page content scrolling. Therefore you just clarified this IS allowed.
The whole double-sidebar thing you mentioned is just weird, and terrible web design.
Does anybody know how to get this working for the genesis framework??
I’ve been trying with no luck.
Nevermind, the last update fixed the issue
I tried this plugin on my MailChimp widget, and it doesn’t appear to do anything. It also automatically unchecks itself whenever I close the setup page.
Did you press the save button ?
Everything works beautifully until the footer of the page comes! How can I get it to stop being a fixed object when it hits the footer? There is always this terrible, sloppy, and messy, overlapping. Thank you for your time!
In the plugin settings, you can add margin bottom. Just put the footer’s height there, and it should be fine.
Nice tutorial. Thanks!
I am already implemented in my site and using it for improving the subscribers to my channel.
YO
Thanks for sharing this man I’ve been looking for an easy way to implement this effect.
I’ll have to test it right away if it works it’s going live on my blog this week thanks bro.