The SBD Aside plugin is a WordPress plugin that allows bloggers to easily create small side-bars for there entries, called asides. I recommend against using this plugin with the WordPress Visual Editor, as I have not tested it with the visual editor, and will not support the use of the plugin through the Visual Editor.

Look at the side-bar on the top right of this page. Press the pull-down button to see the content of the aside. Click the pull-up button to hide the content and make more room for the main article.

Features

Nice features of SBD Aside include:

1. HTML 5 Support. SBD Aside uses the HTML 5 semantic tag <aside> to play well with search engines and content aggregators.
2. Choose left or right placement on the page.
3. Choose expanded (“open”) style, or collapsible.
4. collapsible ones like on the top right of this page can be collapsed or expanded by the reader as required.
5. Choose round corners or square cut.
6. Choose background colour.
7. Choose width in pixels or percent.
8. Choose from one of two caption underline styles.
9. Display a caption
10. All of the above options/settings are optional. Define your own defaults in the plugin’s setting page.
11. The styling for the aside is compact, with a small font and low margins. This minimises space disruption to the main article.

How to use

Inserting an Aside

Its easy. Just type [aside] on the start of a line; some content; then type [/aside] on a fresh line like so…

![aside]
  caption = What you get
  alignment = left
  width = 300px
  collapse_state = expanded
  bg_colour = aqua

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt mollit anim id est laborum.
![/aside]

Options

To specify an option put, within the [aside][/aside] pair an option line. An option line starts with two space, and then proceeds with option=value like so…

![aside]
  caption = This is a caption
![/aside]

Available options include:

Option name	Range of values	Factory default	Effect
caption	Any one-line text		The head-line for the aside
alignment	left or right	right	placement on the page
width	like 200px or 30%	200px	Width of the aside
collapse_state	expanded or collapsed	collapsed	Fixed-open or collapsable
corners	round or sharp	round	Rounded corners or square-cut
hr_style	sbd-regular or sbd-swish	sbd-swish	The style of the underline under the caption
bg_colour	Any html colour like #9ae6d4	#9ae6d4	Background colour of the aside box

Main Aside content

The main aside content starts from the first line between the [aside][/aside] that does not follow the option line pattern.

What about when I want to write [aside] as literal content?

If you want to write [aside] or [/aside] literally then just prefix it by an exclamation mark like so…

!![aside] is how the SBD Aside is demarcated to begin.

If the word “[aside] is not at the start of the line, then no problem. It does not need to be so escaped.
Hey but what if I want to write ![aside] literally at the start of a line? If you need to write [aside] or [/aside] literally at the start of a line, prefixed by any number of exclamation marks, just add one more exclamation mark, or just don’t put it at the start of a line. These escaping rules apply both within and external to asides.

Defaults for options

None of the options are mandatory. If absent in your blog entry text, they will take default values. The blogger can specify his own defaults through WordPress settings.

How to install

1. Your website host must have PHP version 5.3 or better. WordPress must be 3.5 or better. Check your PHP version and WordPress version.
2. Deactivate any other plugin that uses the [aside] markup keyword.
3. Upload sbd-aside folder and its 3 files (sbd-aside.php,sbd-aside.js,sbd-aside.css plus image files) to the /wp-content/plugins/ directory
4. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
5. Go to the WordPress settings for SBD Aside, and configure the defaults as you prefer.