[@jaredatch Member 14 years ago]

Having better control over the sidebar in bbPress is a very common request and there is even a trac ticket for it.

Unfortunately, there’s no easy way to handle this automatically. Each theme/framework handles the placement of the sidebar differently, so we can’t bbPress (or a plugin) can’t simply say “don’t show the sidebar” – it’s going to require modifications to your theme.

For those of you who want control over your sidebar, are flexible with theme you are using, and are not comfortable editing your current theme, there is another solution out there.

I created a plugin for sites running on the Genesis Framework called bbPress Genesis Extend. This plugin primarily builds in bbPress compatibility for the Genesis Framework, however it also ads in a few handy extra features – namely full sidebar control.

https://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/bbpress-genesis-extend/screenshots/

If you use the Genesis Framework and this plugin, it allows you to choose what layout you want to use on bbPress pages (full width page, content-sidebar, sidebar-content, etc). Additionally it also has the option to create a dedicated sidebar for bbPress pages, which would allow you to use bbPress widgets on the bbPress portion of your site.

Hopefully as bbPress becomes more popular, other themes and frameworks will build in similar features which will give site administrators control over the layout/sidebar without having to touch any of the code in your theme.