FAQ

Does this change how anything saves?

No. Sidepipe re-renders the same field inputs Craft's own form would have produced, with the same names, in the same <form>. It has no save handler, no table and no data of its own. Turning it off changes where a field appears and nothing else.

Can I put a Matrix field in the sidebar?

You can. You shouldn't. The sidebar column is about 240 pixels wide; Matrix, CKEditor, Redactor and wide tables need room. Sidepipe renders piped fields full width and keeps oversized content scrolling inside its own box rather than dragging the editor sideways, and that's as far as it can help.

Does it work on things other than entries?

Yes — anything edited through Craft's element editor. Assets, categories, addresses, and nested Matrix entries in cards view. Globals, tag groups and the user profile screen have editors of their own that never build a sidebar, and Sidepipe stands down there. See the table in usage.md.

Why is the arrangement in the field layout rather than a settings screen?

Because that's where the rest of the schema lives. A sidebar arrangement is a statement about the content model, it should travel with the field layout in project config, and it should be editable in the same place you decide the tab order.

Why a marker element instead of a checkbox on each field?

Craft drops any layout element whose plugin is disabled or gone. A checkbox on a field would mean subclassing CustomField, which would mean the fields themselves disappearing from the layout when Sidepipe is uninstalled. With a separate marker, uninstalling loses the arrangement and never a field.

Can one tab have fields in both columns?

Yes. Set the marker to everything below this marker and put the content-pane fields above it.

Can I have two groups in the sidebar?

Yes, in either of two ways: two tabs, each with a marker, or one tab with two markers — the second ends the first one's run. Each group gets its own heading and its own choice of above or below the author and dates.

Does it work in slideouts?

Yes. Slideouts use the same element editor. If a slideout ends up with nothing in its body — every field piped — Craft's own behaviour takes over and shows the sidebar as the body.

What about drafts and autosave?

Unaffected. Piped inputs are registered for delta tracking exactly like the ones in the content pane, and autosave posts the whole form either way.

Conditional fields?

Honoured, with one caveat: Craft re-renders the content pane live and does not re-render the sidebar, so a piped conditional field settles on the next page load rather than instantly. Keep fields whose visibility changes mid-edit in the content pane.

Does it slow anything down?

No measurable amount. Resolution is a walk over the tabs of one field layout, memoized per request. Rendering is the same formHtml() call Craft would have made in the content pane — the same fields, rendered once, in a different place. The stylesheet is loaded only on pages that actually pipe something.

Does it work on the front end?

Sidepipe is a control panel plugin and does nothing on the front end. Your templates read fields exactly as before — where a field renders in the CP has no bearing on entry.myField.

Is it free?

Yes. No editions, no licence key, no licensing code in the plugin.

Does it talk to anything?

No. No outbound requests of any kind, no telemetry, no phoning home.