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In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.

In this tutorial we are going to show you how to configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.

Widget Configuration

By default, your site comes with a number of built-in 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 pages, recent posts, newsfeeds, add a search box, etc.

(By default, your site comes with a number of active widgets)

Adding And Configuring Commonly-Used Widgets On Your Sidebar: Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial, we are going to add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets, including:

• Add a Help image linking visitors to the help page.
• Add a Categories section.
• Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
• Add a list of the site’s most important Pages.
• Display useful Links on the sidebar.
• Add an RSS Feed section.
• Add tags to the sidebar with a Tag Cloud.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar menu.

To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …

(Widgets Menu)

This brings up the Widgets section in your browser …

(Widgets Panel)

Let’s begin to configure your sidebar menu widgets …

Text Widgets

Text widgets are incredibly useful …

(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 can be used to add comments, maps and directions, reviews and more to your site … simply by typing in text or inserting HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …

(Text widgets are versatile!)

Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Support Button To Your Sidebar Area

For this example, we’ll set up a clickable support button on the sidebar navigation area 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 “help button” graphic image that your visitors can click on …

We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar area like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

To display an image on your site, you must first upload the button image to a folder on your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.

E.g. …

http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg

This information will be required in Step 3.

For someone to be taken to your contact page when they click on the graphic button, 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 your support page.

Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …

Step 3 – Compose the 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, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.

Your instructions can be typed into 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 with the URL of your image location.

The screenshot below shows the sections of the above code that you need to replace with your 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, see this tutorial:

• A Beginner’s Guide To Using HTML In WordPress

Now, go back to 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 …

(WordPress text widget)

Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …

(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the widget.

Click on the widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …

Add a title section to your 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 Save when done …

Note: Make sure to check your contact page and button image links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.

*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***

If you’re adding text without formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in an HTML paragraph code (note: not required 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 unchecked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option not checked)

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option selected)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the browser.

Once you have added the widget and code, visit the front-end of your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the clickable support button should display at the top of your sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on sidebar)

The above screenshot shows a clickable button in the sidebar section of a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your widget.

The final step is to ensure that your destination link works. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to the support page when they click on the graphic image. You should be taken to your support page …

(Test the clickable button)

Tips:

If you want the support page to display inside a new browser window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the button code from this:

To this (i.e. include the part that says: target=”_blank” in your html code):

When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation section, 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. As we’ve previously explained, some themes may display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your graphic images, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make the images display correctly on your sidebar area.

(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)

Additional Tips:

• If you don’t want to center your image inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be left-aligned.
• You can link the support button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code in the widget.

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This is the end of part 2 of this series of tutorials on using WordPress widgets.

To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To The Site – Part 3

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