Sidebar not the same everywhere

Go to WP Admin > Appearance > Widgets. See on the right hand side a few drop-down bars? Those are your different sidebars. You’ll likely have one called Categories, and others differently named. You’ll need to find the one/s responsible for your Archive/Category pages.

One bar, Sidebar 1 but it is blank. No fields filled in

OK. Now you can drag some widgets from the left hand side on to it, editing their option where you want. Do you follow?

Yes, but won’t that give me double links on the main page? How do I make the new sidebar show up everywhere but the main page?

You’ll need to look for a plugin to do that unless you have a static home page that does not have sidebar. You could register a new sidebar (or as many as you like), but that will involve diving into the code.

No, I’d rather just fix the issue. Changing code and needing plugins sounds too extensive

Adding some widgets to the sidebar will override the theme’s default settings which may be to show a bunch of widgets just on the home page. Try that first and see what happens.

Easier said than done. You said coding needs to be done and I no longer code. If I do a widget with everything but Categories I’d need the code or each section for the widget. I can do one widget for each section but would still need the code, right?

No code required – just drag a few widgets over to the sidebar and see if that clears out the default ones you’re seeing.

Ok. I created a widget with Archives, Links and Meta. Now, how do I make that appear and once I can, how do I populate it?

I’m hoping I don’t need to code.

Oh hell each time I edit the widget there I hit save on each item. I go back and it’s empty. How do I save it as I drag over items??.

Three times I’ve created it. Three times I’ve lost it. No more.

Can someone else please advise me on this? It isn’t easy to type and I can’t waste my ultra limited time online doing nothing.

Drag the widgets over to the sidebar area, configure them and save. If they don’t show up, there’s another problem.

The sidebar area is is another section under Themes. I can’t drag there; only code.

Ok, there was one widget named Sidebar 1. It finally saved but doesn’t show up on my secondary-and-beyond pages as you said it should. I also tried to create a new widget for the main page but there isn’t a way. If I drag the item to the right it either goes in the existing widget or goes back in place.

I can hand code that tomorrow in sidebar.php as it is just Links. But a widget would save time.

Something just doesn’t add up. You say drag widgets to another section which is impossible. You have to try three times before it saves.

I guess we should have asked this first: what theme are you using? What I’ve described is default WP behavior and I’ve never seen a theme that doesn’t support it.