In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will learn how to configure various widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled 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, news items, add tag clouds, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
Configuring Commonly-Used WordPress Widgets On The Blog Sidebar Navigation Area: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Support Contact image linking visitors to the help page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s most important Pages.
- Display useful Links on your sidebar.
- Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding tags to your sidebar menu through a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar section.
The Widgets area is located inside the WordPress admin area and can easily be accessed from the admin menu by selecting Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s configure WordPress text widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Blog Sidebar
Text widgets are incredibly versatile …
(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 let you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar or other widget sections, such as notices, images, special promotions and more to your site … simply by typing in text or pasting HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are really useful!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, let’s set up a help 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 “help button” graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar navigation section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable button image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the button image to the images folder in your server and note down the path to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
For visitors to go to your contact page when the graphic button gets clicked, 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 the button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add the contact page.
Create a contact page and note 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. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions linking your button image to your contact page.
Your instructions can be typed in a plain text editor 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 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 understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Now, go back to your Widgets area …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the large text box, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test all URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re 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 type in HTML code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding the text widget and HTML code, go to your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button will display in your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows a clickable button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to make sure that the clickable button works. Test this by clicking the graphic button. You should be taken directly to the support page …
(Test the text widget to make sure it works)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors go to your contact page (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in the code):
When inserting images into your sidebar section, 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. As mentioned earlier, some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want your button image to be centered inside your 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 contact button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links in the widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial.
Click here to continue:
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