Category: WordPress Configuration

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

In this section you will learn how to configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.

Configuring Commonly-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets

By default, your site comes with several preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add search features, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several active widgets)

Adding Sidebar Widgets In WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial, we will add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used widgets to display in the site’s sidebar navigation area, including:

• Add a Help graphic linking visitors to your support page.
• Add a Categories section.
• Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
• Adding a list of Pages.
• Display important Links on the sidebar menu.
• Displaying newsfeeds using an RSS Feed section.
• Adding a Tag Cloud.
• Configure how your Archived Posts display on the sidebar navigation area.

To use widgets, access the Widgets panel located inside the dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This brings you to the Widgets area into your browser …

(Widgets Section)

Let’s begin configuring your sidebar widgets …

Text Widgets

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)

Text widgets can be used to add notices, ads, reviews and more to your site … simply type in text or add HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …

(A text widget is very useful!)

Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Support Button To The Sidebar Menu

For this example, we’ll set up a clickable contact button on your sidebar navigation menu that takes 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, create or source a “help button” graphic image that your visitors can click on …

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

Step 1 – Upload your image.

To display the clickable button image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your image to your server and write down the address of your image location.

For example …

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

You will use this information in Step 3.

For visitors to go to the contact page when the help 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 – Create a support page.

Create a contact page and note the page URL …

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

Your code can be written a simple text editor 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 above with the URL of your image location.

The image below shows the sections of the above 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 understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:

• A Basic Guide To HTML Formatting Tags

Now, go back to your Widgets section …

(Widgets Screen)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want your clickable button to display.

In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …

(Text widget)

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

(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the text widget settings.

Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget settings. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into your 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 text area, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your 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 an HTML paragraph code (note: not required if you’re pasting in formatted content like we’re doing in this tutorial).

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)

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

(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh your browser.

Once you have added your widget and formatted content, visit the front end of your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button will display in your sidebar menu …

(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)

The above screenshot shows a clickable button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your button.

The final step is to make sure that the links work. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken to the support page …

(Test the clickable button to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)

Useful Tips:

If you want your contact page to display in a new window when visitors click on the help (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 the html code):

When choosing images to add to your sidebar area, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of the 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 layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your button image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements 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 your button image to be centered inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
• Link the support button to any destination you like (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 tutorial series about using WordPress widgets.

Click on this link to continue:

• How To Add Widgets To The WordPress Blog Sidebar – Part 3

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