In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you will begin configuring various commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Widgets
By default, your site comes with several pre-installed active widgets, such as widgets for displaying links to your site’s pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, add tag clouds, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
How To Configure Widgets On The Sidebar Section: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact graphic button linking visitors to the contact details page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar.
To use widgets, access the Widgets section located inside your WordPress administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s get started …
Add A Text Widget
Text widgets are 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 let you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar section or other widget sections, such as instructions, videos, scripts and more to your site … simply type in text or paste HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …
(A text widget is extremely versatile!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Area
For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on your sidebar that takes 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 you can use on your own site …
We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display an image on your site, first you must upload the button image to your server’s images folder and write down the URL pointing to your server’s 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 support button, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create a destination page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Compose the HTML code for your text widget.
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 linking your button image to the contact page.
Your instructions can be typed in a simple 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 screenshot below shows the sections of the above code that you need to replace with the actual contact details …
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, see this tutorial:
Now, go back into your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget settings.
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 the text widget content area and click save …
Add a heading to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content area, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to test your contact page and button image links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text without formatting tags like paragraph breaks, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: this is not necessary if you’re pasting in code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
After adding your text widget and formatted content, go to your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button will display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the contact button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to ensure that the clickable button works. Test this by clicking the button. If you are taken to the support page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget)
Tips:
If you want your contact page to open inside a new window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. include the section containing target=”_blank” in your html code):
When adding images to your sidebar navigation area, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As we’ve previously explained, some themes may display elements differently 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 your button image, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make images display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button inside 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 your contact button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside your widget.
***
This is the end of part two of this series of tutorials.
To view Part 3, click this link:
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum