In Part One of this tutorial, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will configure a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with a number of built-in 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 pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, adding content search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several active widgets)
How To Add And Configure Commonly-Used Widgets On The WordPress Sidebar Area: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various widgets, including:
- Add a clickable Support Contact image linking visitors to your help page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar navigation area.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar navigation menu.
The Widgets section can be easily accessed inside the admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s configure text widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu
Text widgets are incredibly 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, image links, tips and more to your site … simply type in text or paste HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …
(A text widget is very useful!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a support button on the sidebar section 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 visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the button image to your server and note the address of your 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 the support button gets clicked, 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 a 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, we just need to create the instructions linking the graphic image to the contact page/helpdesk.
Your instructions can be typed in a simple text editor and will 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 which sections of the above code you need to replace with the actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Next, 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 the clickable button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a 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 Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into your 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 URLs into the Content box, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to check your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re 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 an HTML paragraph code (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 option not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
Once you have added the text widget and HTML code, visit the front end of your site and refresh your browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your clickable support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows ’click for help’ button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The last step is to make sure that your clickable button works. Test this by clicking the button. If you are taken to your contact page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget to ensure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you want the contact page to open inside a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. include the part containing target=”_blank” in your code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar area, 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 layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make the images display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want the button image to be centered inside the 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).
- You can link your support button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links inside your text widget.
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This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials.
To continue reading, click this link:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)