Suddenly a menu appears in my sidebar

Hi Cristo,

You should be able to remove that in Dashboard > Appearance > Widget > Right Sidebar.

Let me know if this helps.

Or check if you have Right Sidebar selected in Customizer > Layout > Secondary Navigation > Navigation Location.

The thing is, I did not do anything. I don't have anything in my sidebars yet, and it just suddenly showed up there. But I will eventually have some widgets in my sidebar and don't want the menu there.

Did you check my second solution? https://generatepress.com/forums/topic/suddenly-a-menu-appears-in-my-sidebar/#post-273519

Yes, I did and it went away. But I now have a search box in my sidebar that was not there before and an "archives" heading that also was not there before. So it cannot be something that I did.

You can change/disable sidebars globally in Customizer > Layout > Sidebars > Sidebar Layout/Blog Sidebar Layout.

Or change them for each page using the Sidebar Layout metabox on the right side of Edit Page.

The search and archive would show up if you have sidebar enabled, even if you added nothing in the actual widget.

Let me know if this helps.

Frankly, I am disappointed in your answer, I DID NOT make any changes to my menu, sidebars, etc.
Perhaps you had an update, but whatever it was it is not something I should un-do since I never did it in the first place. There has never been anything in my sidebars until an hour ago.

Unfortunately, I have to leave for the day.

Sorry I didn't mean to disappoint you - just trying to fix the problem that's all.

Did you update the theme or plugin in the last hour? Updates don't just automatically happen without your permission.

And if that's causing by updates then I'm sure everyone else would notice that their website's layout is changing.

Let me know if I can help more.

Hi Cristo,

When there's nothing in your sidebar, some default widgets show up in there to fill the empty space (Archives, Search etc..). These aren't added by you or anyone else, they're simply fallbacks. When you add a widget to the widget area, those fallbacks will disappear and your added widget will show up.

It's the same for the navigation, if it's set to display in a sidebar (it sounds like that's where your navigation was set to), those fallback widgets won't appear.

Once you moved the navigation from the sidebar, the fallbacks appeared again.

As for the navigation appearing in the sidebar - that's super strange. Obviously, we don't make any changes to your settings when we update the theme, that would be frustrating.

It's possible that the setting was there originally but wasn't showing up due to your caching plugin (WP Super Cache). Once the cache was cleared, the navigation moved which was obviously super confusing.

I always suggest that caching plugins aren't activated when the site is still actively being worked on. This can lead to frustration as settings are cached and it looks like options aren't working etc..

Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns - always happy to help :)

Ok, I have disbled the caching plug-in My big worry is that I am not a coder...just someone who wants a decent website and that is why I chose WP and GP. I realize from reading the forum that most of your customers are website designers so they are much more knowledgable than I am. In fact, I don't even use beaver builder...just doing the basics right now.

When a change suddenly appears that I did not make, it scares me because I don't know how to fix it. Right now the site is still under construction, so no big deal, but if something like this happens when the site is live then it is a different matter.

So I still don't understand what happened.But if the nav menu and search menu will disappear when it is live that is OK by me.

I did learn a bit of code:   separates my paragraphs like this page, and then also know how to add the Google maps, but that is about as far as I can take it.

I would say that most people on the forum are like yourself and not website developers which is why we are always here to help.

If you are not after a crazy looking website then a page builder plugin is definitely not needed. Most people would be surprised how much they can accomplish with just GP and a bit of code.

You just have to make sure that the content layout is set to Content (No Sidebars) if you are not using sidebar widgets (empty right sidebar widget) then search and archive shouldn't show up.

Hi Leo,
Thanks for the response. Problem is, I would like to use a sidebar area, but it would be unique to each page, like this page on my old site. I can move te photos into the content section, but I also have ads, etc in the right hand column. Any suggestions?

btw, I notice you have a place to submit websites for review, but I don't see where they are showcased. Maybe I missed it, but would love to see what others have done.

You can use a plugin to add unique sidebar content on different pages:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/display-widgets/

Lots of good sites in this post: https://generatepress.com/forums/topic/want-your-site-showcased/

Thanks, Leo. I'll check it our when I get to that phase. Still copying and pasting my old site (about 600 done and another 50 or so to go).