In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you are going to begin configuring several WordPress sidebar widgets.
Configuring Widgets
By default, your site comes with several built-in active widgets, such as widgets for displaying external links, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, add search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Set Up Sidebar Widgets: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various frequently-used widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Support Contact graphic linking visitors to the help page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of your site’s main Pages.
- Display important Links on the sidebar.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar.
The Widgets area can be accessed inside the administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s begin by learning how to configure text widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To The Sidebar Section
Text widgets are quite useful …
(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 lets you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar navigation area or other widget sections, such as policies, image links, scripts 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 …
(A text widget is really versatile!)
Example: Add A Help Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable support button on the sidebar that will take 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your image to your server and note down the URL pointing to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to your contact page when they click on the graphic 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 graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create the contact page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create 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, you just need to create the instructions linking the button image to the contact page.
Your code can be typed in a plain text file and will 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 will need to replace with the actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Go back into your Widgets section …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the support button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click save …
Add a title to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your clickable button will not 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 formatted HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)
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 web browser.
After adding your text widget and content, visit your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your clickable support button should display in the sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the contact button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to make sure that your links work. Test the button to make sure that visitors will go to the contact page when they click on the button. You should be taken to your support page …
(Test the clickable button to ensure it works)
Tips:
If you would like your contact page to display in a new browser 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 part containing target=”_blank” in your code):
When choosing images for your sidebar section, 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. Note that some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make images display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the image inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then align to the left.
- Link your contact button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in the widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this series of tutorials.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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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