Enable the sidebar

Rural Blog has one widget area, called Sidebar. It appears beside the content on any template set to Sidebar left or Sidebar right.

Turning it on is two steps, and missing either is the usual reason a sidebar does not appear.

1. Put something in it

Appearance → Widgets, or Customize → Widgets → Sidebar.

Add at least one widget. An empty widget area is treated as no sidebar at all.

2. Pick a sidebar layout

The layout is per template, so decide where you want it:

Choose Sidebar right or Sidebar left. You can have a sidebar on the blog and not on posts, which is a common and sensible split.

Individual posts and pages can override the site default from the Post options / Page options box in the editor.

Why my sidebar is not showing

Almost always: the widget area is empty.

A sidebar layout with nothing to put in it would leave a visitor staring at an empty column, so the theme falls back to a single column instead — narrow if the listing display is stacked, full width otherwise.

If you are logged in and can manage widgets, you see the column with a note:

This sidebar is empty. Only you can see this note.

with a link to the widgets screen. Visitors see one column. That note is the theme telling you exactly which of the two steps you missed.

Other things to check:

• You set the layout on the wrong template — the blog’s setting does not reach single posts.
• The post or page has a Layout override in its options box set to Narrow or Full width, which beats the site default.
• You are looking at search results, which follow the Blog layout.

On small screens

The sidebar stacks below the content on narrow screens, always. It is a second column only where there is room for two.

That is worth remembering when you decide what to put in it: on a phone, every sidebar widget is something the reader scrolls past after the post.

Related

• Sidebar width and gap
• Widget styles