In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In this tutorial you are going to configure other commonly-used blog widgets.
Adding A Categories Widget To The Blog Sidebar
Now that you have configure a text widget containing a clickable support button, let’s configure a widget for displaying Categories on the sidebar navigation section.
The Categories widget already displays on your 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 your sidebar widget area …
(WordPress Post Categories widget)
your post categories …
(WordPress Post Categories)
Note: We are currently putting together tutorials on setting up WordPress post categories.
Let’s configure the Categories settings for this widget as shown below:
- In Title: type something that your visitors will understand, for example, “Choose A Topic…” (1)
- If you plan to add several categories, check Display as dropdown (this significantly reduces the length of your content by displaying all categories inside a drop-down menu). Leave the box unchecked if you want a list of all categories to display on your sidebar menu. (2)
- Leave the default settings for the remaining options, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
- Click Save to update your settings …
(Categories widget settings)
Load the site in your web browser or reload the page to see how your sidebar categories will display to your site visitors …
(WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar area)
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 option, otherwise leave this box unchecked.
- To display the number of posts published in each category on your site, tick the Show post counts check box …
(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)
Add Recent Posts To Your Sidebar Navigation Section
The Recent Posts widget is normally added to your sidebar by default. All you need to do is configure this widget.
Click on your Recent Posts title bar to display the configuration settings …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget)
There’s very little to set up. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and display post dates. If you’re happy with 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 widget settings)
Your most recent posts will appear on the sidebar navigation area …
(Recent Posts widget displayed on blog sidebar)
Creating and editing WordPress Posts is explained in this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A Post In WordPress
Displaying Your Site’s Pages
Next, let’s add a widget to your sidebar menu to display page links.
Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress Pages Widget)
Drag the Pages widget to your sidebar widget area …
(Adding a Pages widget to your sidebar navigation menu)
The Pages widget allows you to configure the following options:
- Title: Add a title to display above your links (e.g. “Site Info“) (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) …
(Pages Widget settings)
By default, pages will be listed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using another option, then choose a different method from the Sort by: drop-down menu …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings – sort options)
To prevent pages from showing on the widget, enter the Page Ids for the pages you want to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field …
(Pages Widget settings – excluding pages by ID)
A tutorial is provided on how to find a page ID in WordPress here: How To Find WordPress Post And Page IDs
Click the Save button when finished and then click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.
Links to your site’s pages will now appear on the sidebar navigation area …
(Pages Widget on sidebar)
Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to your sidebar navigation area. This is handy if you want to display different page groups on the sidebar (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)
Display Links On Your Blog Sidebar
Next, we’ll add a widget to your WordPress sidebar that displays links to external resources.
Before adding the Links widget to your sidebar, we recommend first configuring your Links section inside your WP dashboard …
(WordPress Links screen)
Note: We plan to provide separate tutorials about how to set up the WordPress Links feature.
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 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 the sidebar navigation menu …
(Links Widget Settings)
You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to the sidebar menu 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 The 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 …
( WordPress Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)
When you have finished configuring your Links Widget, click the Save button to update your settings. Your links will become immediately visible on your site …
(External links added to WordPress sidebar menu)
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 lists of links to your WordPress sidebar navigation area.
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This is the end of part 3 of this tutorial.
Click here to view the rest of this tutorial series:
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