In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you are going to learn how to begin configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, add a search box, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets)
How To Add Sidebar Widgets In WordPress: Tutorial
In this tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:
- Adding a Support button linking visitors to the contact details page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of the site’s most important Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on the sidebar.
- Display newsfeeds with an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar section.
The Widgets section is located inside the WP admin area and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets area in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s get started …
Add A Text Widget To Your Sidebar Menu
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)
A text widget can be used to add email and contact information, videos, messages and more to your site … simply type in text or add HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are very useful!)
Example: Add A Help Button To The Sidebar Area Using A Text Widget
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 will want your visitors to click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar 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 your server and note the address of your server’s image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
For someone to go to your contact page when the graphic button is clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link your button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add a contact page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose the code for your text widget.
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 code can be typed in a simple text file 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 image below shows the sections of the above sample code that you need to replace with the actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the support button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the 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 your text widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content area, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If 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: this is not necessary if you type in HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your text widget and content, go to your site and refresh your browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your support button should display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the contact button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The last step is to ensure that the clickable button works. Test this by clicking on the graphic button. If you are taken directly to your contact page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the text widget to ensure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you want a new browser window to open up when visitors click on your support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in your html code):
When inserting images into your sidebar 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. Note that some themes may display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the button image, then you may need to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Make sure the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button image in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- Link your support button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in your widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial series.
To keep reading, click this link:
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"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