In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you are going to learn how to begin configuring various WordPress widgets.
How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Blog Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, add content search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)
Adding Widgets To Your Sidebar Area: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder various commonly-used widgets, including:
- Adding a Support Contact graphic button linking visitors to the contact details page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Adding a list of your site’s main Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar navigation menu.
- Displaying the latest news using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets section can be accessed inside the WP dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings you to the Widgets area into your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s start to configure some sidebar widgets …
Adding Text Widgets
Text widgets are incredibly versatile …
(WordPress Text widget)
Rich Text Widget
From version 4.8 onward, WordPress has added native rich-text editing capabilities to text widgets …
(Rich Text Widget)
This lets you quickly and easily format text, create lists, add emphasis, and insert links into your sidebar text …
(Format text easily with the new text widget)
A text widget can be used to add single lines or paragraphs of text, images, messages and more to your site … just type in text or paste HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are really useful!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To The Sidebar Menu
For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on your sidebar area that takes your visitors to a page on your site (or an external site, e.g. a helpdesk) where they can contact you for help and support.
First, create or source a “help button” graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation menu like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display an image on your site, you must first upload the button image to a folder on your server and write down the path to your server’s image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
For someone to go to your contact page when they click on the help button, you will need to either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link your button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create the support page.
Create a contact page and note its URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, you just need to create the instructions linking the graphic image to your contact page.
Your code can be written a plain text file and should look something like this …
- Replace “http://www.yourdomain.com/contact-us” in the code above with the URL of your contact page location.
- Replace “http://yourimagelocation.com/img/supportbutton.jpg” in the code above with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot below shows the sections of the above sample code that you will need to replace with the actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Next, go back into your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your clickable button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your text widget settings.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content box, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to check your contact page and button image links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text without formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: not required if you paste in formatted content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not checked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added the widget and formatted content, visit your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the support contact button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The last step is to ensure that your clickable button works. Test your button to make sure that visitors will go to your help page when they click on the graphic image. If you are taken directly to your contact page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you want your support page to open inside a new window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section that says: target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When adding images to your sidebar navigation area, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of the sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that some themes may display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the button image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Make sure the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- You can link the support button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links in the text widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial about using WordPress widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group