In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In this tutorial you are going to configure other commonly-used blog widgets.
How To Add A Categories Widget
Now that you have configure a text widget containing a contact button, let’s configure a widget for your Post Categories.
The Categories widget already displays on the sidebar by default. All you have to do, therefore, is place the widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it on the sidebar widget area …
(WordPress Categories widget)
Before adding a Categories widget to your sidebar, you will first need to configure your categories inside the WordPress dashboard …
(WordPress Categories Panel)
Note: We plan to create separate tutorials on how to configure and use post categories.
Configure your categories widget settings as shown below:
- In Title: type something that your visitors will understand, for example, “Choose A Topic…” (1)
- If you have too many categories, check Display as dropdown (this significantly reduces the length of the widget content by displaying all categories in a drop-down menu). Leave the box unticked if you want a list of all categories to display on your sidebar. (2)
- Leave the default settings for the remaining options, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
- Click Save when done …
(Categories widget settings)
Click Visit Site or reload the page to see how the content will look to site visitors …
(WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar navigation section)
Tips:
- Change the default Uncategorized post category to something more meaningful.
- If you use nested categories on your site, you may want to check the Show hierarchy box, otherwise leave this option as is.
- To display the number of posts published in each category on your site, enable the Show post counts check box …
(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)
Add A Recent Posts Section
The Recent Posts widget displays in your sidebar by default. All you need to do is configure the widget.
Click on the Recent Posts widget title bar to display the configuration settings …
(Recent Posts widget)
There’s really very little to set up in this widget. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and opt to display post dates. If you’re happy to use the default Number of posts to show setting, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise change the number of posts and click Save …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget settings)
Your most recent posts will now display to visitors on your sidebar menu …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget added to sidebar)
How to create and edit posts in WordPress is covered in this tutorial: How To Create A New Post In WordPress
Display Your Site’s Main Pages In Your Blog Sidebar
Next, let’s add a widget to your sidebar for listing pages.
Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress Pages Widget)
Drag the Pages widget to your widget section …
(Inserting a Pages widget into the sidebar section)
The Pages widget lets you configure the following options:
- Title: Add a title to the widget (e.g. “Pages“) (1)
- Sort by: Sort how your pages display: by title (i.e. alphabetically), by page order, or by page ID. (2)
- Exclude: Use this setting to prevent pages from showing on the sidebar (3) …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings)
By default, pages will be listed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using one of the other options, then select a different method from the Sort by: drop-down menu …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings – sort options)
To exclude pages from showing on the widget, type or paste in the Page Ids for all the pages you would like to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field of the Pages widget …
(Pages Widget settings – excluding pages by ID)
To learn how to find a WordPress post or page ID, see this tutorial: How To Locate The Post Or Page ID In A WordPress Blog
Click the Save button when finished and then click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.
Links to your pages will now appear in the sidebar …
(Pages Widget on sidebar)
Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar menu. This is helpful if you want to display different page groups on your sidebar navigation menu (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)
Display Links On Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Next, we’ll add a widget for displaying external links on your sidebar navigation menu.
Before adding the Links widget to your sidebar menu, we recommend setting up your Links feature inside your WP dashboard …
(WordPress Links section)
Note: We plan to create a separate step-by-step tutorial on how to use WordPress Links.
To add the widget, find a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …
(Links Widget)
Drag it to your sidebar area …
(Making Links Widget active)
The Links widget offers a number of configurable options, including the ability to specify what information to show about your links and how many links you want to display on your sidebar area …
(WordPress Links Widget Settings)
You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to your sidebar as you want. As you will see in a moment, this lets you create and display specific lists of links on your site …
(Add Multiple WordPress Links Widgets To Your Sidebar)
You can sort links by Link title, Link rating, Link ID, or display links in Random order …
(WordPress Links widget: ‘Sort by:’ drop-down menu)
You can also create and display a list of items for a specific category, by selecting a link category from the ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu …
( Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)
When you have finished configuring the Links Widget, click the Save button …
(External links added to sidebar)
As the above example shows, you can display specific links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple link lists to your WordPress sidebar navigation area.
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This is the end of part 3 of this tutorial.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:
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