In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial we are going to show you how to configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, recent posts, RSS feed content, add a search box, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several active widgets)
How To Configure Frequently-Used Sidebar Widgets: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Support Contact button linking visitors to your help page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Adding a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display Links on your sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar.
The Widgets area is located in the WP dashboard and can easily be accessed from the administration menu by selecting Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s start configuring your sidebar menu widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To The Blog Sidebar
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)
Text widgets can be used to add instructions, maps and directions, forms and more to your site … simply by typing in text or adding HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …
(A text widget is very useful!)
Example: Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a support button on the sidebar that will take 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that you will want your visitors to click on …
We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your image to your server and write down the URL pointing to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
In order for visitors to go to the contact page when they click on the graphic button, you must either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add a destination page.
Create a contact page and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
If you’re not a technical-minded person, don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your code can be typed in a plain text file and should look something like this …
- Replace “http://www.yourdomain.com/contact-us” in the code with the URL of your contact page location.
- Replace “http://yourimagelocation.com/img/supportbutton.jpg” in the code with the URL of your image location.
The image below shows which sections of the above code you need to replace with the actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help with basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Now, go back to your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like your support button to 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 top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget settings.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget settings. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …
Add a title to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check all links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text with no formatting tags like paragraph breaks, 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 with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding the widget and content, go to the front-end of your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button will display at the top of your sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button in the sidebar navigation section of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to make sure that the clickable button works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the contact page when clicking 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 to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you would like a new window to open up when visitors click on the support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in your html code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar menu, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your theme.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your image in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link your contact button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content inside your text widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial on how to use WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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