Wriging

My sidebar on my main index in order of importance (thus placement):

1. RSS subscription
2. Random Gallery Pictures
3. Most Read Posts of the Week.
4. Recently Commented Posts
5. Recent Visitors via MyBlogLog
6. Readers with the most comments
7. Frequently Read Blogs
8. Random 9ruler Blogs
9. Meta Stuff

Always good to put the most important and most practical things on your sidebar. I might not always follow it to the letter (with things like MyBlogLog and all), but as far as I arranged it, I do use everything I need on my sidebar and I would expect that people who visit my blog does have some connected with them too.

Things I've grown out of and don't like are chatboxes, weather widgets, last.fm widgets, music widgets. Really...does anyone need a weather widget or a music playing widget? What's what got to do with a blog, unless of course they do talk about weather and music. But in general. Really.

Any particular widgetized plugins you'd recommend?

None, avoid like the plague

What do you like to see in a sidebar?

Stuff relevant to the site

What do you currently have in your blog's sidebar?

Links to other sections, Logo.

For me, I like to keep it simple. Few things annoy me more than a never-ending sidebar.

1. Search
2. RSS feed(s)
3. Link to About if this isn't a really obvious page in the head-bar or something
4. Latest comments
5. Interesting articles
6. Category and Archive listing
7. Random Flickr pictures
8. Stats/meta

Search is in my header.

1) 6 most recent uploaded photos (gallery2)
2) Up to 4 most recently played albums (last.fm)
3) Up to 4 most recently read books (goodreads)
4) 10 latest shared google reader bookmarks
5) Blogroll

Then I've got the footer which Let's you navigate categories, most popular posts, and latests comments.

BUT... the sidebar is contextually different, that's the home page.

When reading an article you get

1) Up to 10 related posts
3) Up to 10 most popular in the same category

On a category listing you get the most popular posts in the category.

I'm with Cas on hating never-ending sidebars. I prefer short and sweet, simple and straight forward. I currently have two sidebars on my index page, with my content running down the middle. The left side is narrow and houses the advertising. The right side, which is much wider and prettier, houses the following:

1. Next Grand Prix (very relevant to my site)
2. RSS Subscription link
3. Popular Posts (limited to five)
4. [Split column] Random Entries and Recent Comments (again limited)
5. Poll thingy (but I'm happy to remove this at any point if I feel like it)

On single post view, the sidebar gets even simpler with just post information, related entries and an AdSense block.

I keep archive and category listings in the footer, and the search box is in the header next to the top navigation.

I recently changed to a simpler theme so had to cut some stuff from my sidebar to what I thought was most important.

1. Page Navigation
2. RSS Subscription
3. Category List
4. Tag Cloud (Most used tags)
5. Most Recent Comments

Some of the things that I had in the sidebar from the previous theme I put on a separate page or dropped entirely and it's still kind of a long sidebar (though that's partly due to the theme's formatting). I put the Search, Category List, Monthly Archive, and full Tag Cloud into an Archive Page. I also moved links to a Links page. I almost cut the Category list from the sidebar since it was also in the Archive Page, but a couple of the category links get used a quite a bit so I left them in the sidebar.

The only thing I wish I had room for in the theme were the recent posts feeds from friend blogs. I don't think they actually drove much traffic to those friend sites, but I think they help them as far as search engines go, so I feel a bit wrong about it.

I like the recent comments widget. When I visit other blogs that have this I use it to know if anything has been added to a conversation since I last visited.

Thanks for all the great input everyone. I'll be working more on my sidebar in the coming days and trying a couple new setups. Thanks again for all the ideas.

I prefer no ads, my sidebar consist mainly of rss feeds and text widgets where I add things I want my readers to see. I change the content periodically.

I have a bottom bar which contains a tag cloud,categories and recent posts and comments and a couple o other small picture items.

I use very few plugins but just installed a copyright plugin as my digital fingerprint stopped working.

I have two other blogs which have sidebar configurations specific to their intent.

I've got search, top posts, recent comments, subscription options and categories. I've been meaning to add a Top Commenters list as well but haven't gotten around to it yet.

Not very hot on blog bling (MBL, etc.) mainly because they've had limited benefits in my experience and they sometimes tend to slow down the site.

Search, archives, categories all in one section that is controlled by a toggle function to hide and show the section you need

Recent posts

Reader's favorites

my tumblr feed

ad space

At the moment I've got:

• RSS subscription (link to Feedburner feed)
• Recent posts
• Categories
• Archives
• Links to friends / partners

When I come to redesign my website, I'll be getting rid of some of this. My web stats seem to bear out that most people either find a specific post by Googling, or they find the site and read it from that point forward. They don't tend to dig into the past.

Blog Search

About (includes studio info, resource links, bios, recommend materials, etc)

Gear Ads for musicians friend and guitar center

Google Adsense column

Recent Entries

Subscribe and RSS feed links (this is so far down because I have a "Subscribe to my blog" link at the top of each blog post)

Recent Comments

Archives

Categories

Twitter

Blog rolls

* Asides (three posts)
* Category list
* Twitter status
* Pownce status
* Last.fm (last five songs played)
* del.icio.us bookmarks (five most recent)
* Diggs (five most recent)
* MyBlogLog
* Button link to Blog Catalog

I've got mine updated now. I'll be making more changes as we go along. If you have the chance, check it out and let me know what you think.

Panels of Awesome

Nicely done. I approve.

I like the search box, archive, category combo tab thing. That solves so many space problems.

- I also have the search box first, as it doesn't take much place
- Under that I have the category cloud acting as a pointer or indicator for the blog's subjects (Design, Marketing, Advertising)
- Then the RSS button
- Recent Comments (5)
- Blogroll
- Sponsors
- At last, a little gadget I discovered. This one is really totally useless but it's very subtle and unobstrusive, and I'm trying it out for a while. It's fish from a bird's-eye view... lol

But generally, I really go with "simple and effective". "Don't overload your sidebar" is good advice.

1. Search Section
2. RSS Subscription Options
3. Featured Items: includes links to my photography on Flickr, some ads and anything else I want to feature like my interview with Paul Stamatiou.
4. Skribit: someone please suggest something! Just added it!
5. Topics or Categories
6. Latest Posts
7. Flickr RSS
8. Another ad (testing)

For real, please suggest something with Skribit!

:)

Cool note idea!

1. Entrecard / RSS buton-Feedburner Readers Count

2. 2 Private ADS 125x125

3. BIO Widget / 150x150 Pic

4. Intro and button for Squidoo lens.

5. Pages Menu / Recent Entrecard Drops

6. Twitter (last 7 Tweets)

7. Categories / SPOTT 125x125 AD exchange

8. Blog Catalog Recent Viewers Widget

9. Links to sites I contribute posts to

10. A probably annoying amount of widgets.

11. Blogroll (I label it "Blogs I Read")

Wow, compared to Cas's version of simple my site is virtually barren! ;) I liked rileycentral's idea of just posting a picture so here you go:

Ah just look at that sidebar, nice and clean :D

Search, Feeds Links, About Link, Archives Link, Blogroll Link

For widget plugin

top commentator
most read post or popular posts are quite good.

I do prefer to add the following widgets in my blog

1. Search box (if it is not in header or top of your layout)
2. Subscription box or subscribe (optional)
5. Ads (G ads or private ads whatever)
3. Archives
4. Categories
5. Mybloglog

Summary of your [ About ] profile. I think it is better that telling the reader that who you're.

I think it is enough.

Remember that, the more your put, the slower your blog loading time.

I have nothing in my sidebars at the moment, but I'll add the Chawlk widgets in a bit once I get those stylized and from there I'll just have to wait and see. I'm not all about clogging up the sidebar with stuff people won't even bother to check out.