What are sticky elements?

Sticky elements are slowly but surely becoming one of the most prominent ideas in designers’ brainstorming sessions. These elements are designed to stay(stick) in one place on the page, even though the users are scrolling down. You have a variety of options on what you want to stick to your page, whether that be a wp Sticky header, sticky menu, sticky navigation, or sticky widget. Sticky elements can make your Ad box stay the whole time on the page while the user is browsing. Or to improve your traffic, you can make social media buttons sticky, so it’s easily shareable. Make the information box sticky, so the user can contact you anytime while using the website. They can be utilized in numerous ways, and the most underestimated, yet most effective sticky element is the sticky menu.

What is a sticky menu?

A sticky menu is a sticky element that stays on the top even though the user is scrolling down the page. This sticky element is particularly handy when it comes to one-page websites. A sticky menu can contain anything that would make users reach for it. It usually includes the About Us section, Support, Learn More, and many other features.
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The menu that doesn’t disappear while the user is scrolling can make the browsing experience faster and more comfortable. What if the user would have to go back to the top of the page just to pick something from the menu – it would be time-consuming, and they would quickly lose interest and leave the site. But that doesn’t necessarily need to be the case.

Change it by implying this feature on your page. Show your logo, show your bio, contact info, hyperlinks to more entertaining content from you, make it visible, leave the user wanting more. More for them to explore means more of your traffic increasing, more sharing, more visitors, and all you did was took two minutes out of your time and installed the plugin that made all of that possible. The sticky menu is one of the most simplistic sticky elements but is the most useful one. You can create it by coding it yourself, or you can use a plugin.

Code vs. plugin

Coding is one of the ways to create a sticky menu. It isn’t recommended for beginners because it’s difficult and time-consuming. But if you’re interested in the coding process, here’s the sum of it.

Open your webpage, and then on the dashboard under the Appearance, click Customize. On the bottom, you will see the Additional CSS option. Once you opened it, you’ll need to know the ID or class of the element you want to target.
To find this, right-click Inspect element,

Here you can select the pointer to choose the code line or scroll through the line of elements until you find the one you want to make sticky. Copy it, click Customize on Admin bar, chose Additional CSS, and start writing the code. From here, you can manually position the sticky menu. For example, here is the code for the basic sticky menu.

.navbar {
overflow: hidden;
background-color: #444;
position: fixed;
top: 0;
left: 0;
right: 0;
width: 100%;
}

There is a lot more work to be done here, this is just to make an element sticky, and we haven’t even covered the visual features that need to be added. That’s why the coding is not really beginner-friendly, and why your best bet would be setting them up by using a plugin.

With the plugin, this can be done within minutes. The plugin variant gives you the option boxes where you can choose what element you want to make sticky and all the following features that come with it. We’ll take WP Sticky as an example of using the plugin to create the sticky menu.

What is WP Sticky?

WP Sticky is a plugin that allows you to make a sticky menu (or any other element) with just a few clicks.

How to create a sticky menu with WP Sticky?

Once you’ve installed and activated the product, open its settings. You’ll see in the yellow box in the left corner, Add New Sticky Element. Click that, and the fun begins.

First name your element, for example, my header, and then pick an element you want to make sticky.

The Visual Picker lets you point the mouse cursor onto the element and click it. Few clicks, and you got yourself a sticky menu; simple as that. These were the basic options, now on to the visual options.

Visual options let you customize the behavior and looks of a sticky menu. The first is a Position which lets you choose where you want to place your sticky element on the top or the bottom of the page.

The second is Space between the top of the page and the sticky element. Adjust it by adding the number of pixels that you want between them so an element doesn’t appear too close to the top of the page.

Next is Check for Admin Toolbar, which makes sure the admin toolbar doesn’t overcast the sticky element.

Forth is Devices, where you can choose which devices you want to make elements stick and on which ones you don’t. For example, you have small(

Z-Index is next and is optional. It makes sure other elements don’t overlap the sticky element. To make sure that the sticky element always stacks on top, set the Z-index to 99999.

The Effect you choose is how your sticky menu will pop out once passing a certain point on a page. You can make it fade-in or slide down.

Next is Opacity that lets you make the sticky element more or less transparent.

With Scroll range, you can set part of the page where the element will become sticky.

Background color when sticky lets you choose the color of the sticky element, so your sticky element blends in perfectly with the chosen theme of the website.

And last Custom CSS, when sticky, lets you add visual changes with the custom CSS.

WP Sticky key features

Blazing fast – It only takes minutes to set up a sticky element.
Pick Visually – No need for coding, pick the element right off the screen.
Stick All the Things – Makes any element sticky, whether that be the header, menu, navigation, or widget.
Works with everything – Compatible with all themes, page builders & plugins.
ProSupport – amazing customer support will guide you through any issue step by step.
Easy and popular – easy to use and with over 100.000 users it makes it the most popular sticky plugin on WordPress.

Conclusion

Sticky elements will allow you to run your page smoothly and users to browse with ease. It will save you time with creating sticky elements, and users will be able to browse faster. If you’re a beginner and looking for a way to make your page stand out with sticky elements but don’t have the knowledge of coding one, the WP Sticky will take care of the job. You don’t need to possess the coding skills; you just need to select the right plugin that will do all the hard work for you. With this tool, you can exploit the possibility of increasing your traffic, improve the user experience, and it will only take you a few minutes to set it up.

The post Everything you need to know about making a sticky menu – code vs. plugin appeared first on Blog - MintTM.