How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3

Learn how to add and configure a number of useful widgets on your WordPress sidebar …

How To Use WidgetsIn Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.

In this section you are going to configure other sidebar widgets.

How To Add Categories

Now that you have set up a text widget containing a support button, let’s configure a widget for displaying Post Categories on the sidebar.

By default, the Categories widget displays on the sidebar. Place the widget wherever you want your post categories to display by clicking and dragging it on your sidebar widget area …

WordPress Post Categories Widget

(Categories widget)

Useful Tip

Before adding a Categories widget to your sidebar, we recommend configuring your Post Categoriessection first …

WordPress Categories Panel

(WordPress Categories)

Note: We plan to create separate step-by-step tutorials on how to configure categories.

Let’s configure the Categories settings for your widget as described below:

  • In Title: type something that will make sense to your visitors, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
  • Check Display as dropdown if you plan to use many categories (this significantly reduces the length of your widget content by displaying all categories inside a drop-down menu). Leave the box unticked if you want a list of all categories to display on the sidebar. (2)
  • You can leave the remaining options unchecked, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
  • Click Save when finished …

Categories Widget settings

(WordPress Categories widget settings)

Load the site in your browser or refresh your page to see how the content will display to visitors …

WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar

(WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar section)

Practical Tip

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 box, otherwise leave this section as is.
  • To display the number of posts published in each category, enable the Show post counts check box …

Category widget options - Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled

(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)

Add Recent Posts To Your Sidebar

The Recent Posts widget typically shows in your sidebar by default. All you need to do is configure your widget.

Click on its widget title bar to display the configuration settings …

Recent Posts widget

(Recent Posts WordPress widget)

There’s very little to configure. You can add a widget title, select the number of posts to display and opt to display post dates. If you want to use the default setting for Number of posts to show, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise enter the number of posts to show and click Save

Recent Posts widget settings

(Recent Posts WordPress widget settings)

Your most recent posts will appear on the sidebar navigation area …

Recent Posts widget added to sidebar

(Recent Posts widget on sidebar)

How to create and edit WordPress Posts is covered in this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A Post In WordPress

Add A Pages Widget To The Sidebar Navigation Section

Next, we’ll add a widget to your sidebar navigation area to display page links.

Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …

WordPress Pages Widget

(WordPress Pages Widget)

Drag the Pages widget to your active widget section …

Inserting a Pages widget into the sidebar

(Adding a Pages widget to the sidebar section)

The Pages widget lets you configure the following settings:

  • 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 page ID. (2)
  • Exclude: Hide selected pages on your sidebar area (3) …

Pages Widget settings

(Pages Widget settings)

By default, pages are displayed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using one of the other options, then choose a different method in the Sort by: drop-down menu …

Pages Widget settings - sort options

(WordPress Pages Widget settings – sort options)

To prevent certain pages from displaying to visitors, type or paste in the Page Ids for the pages you would like to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field of the widget …

Pages Widget settings - exclude pages

(WordPress Pages Widget settings – exclude pages)

How to find a WordPress page ID is explained here: How To Locate Post And Page IDs In Your WordPress Blog

Click the Save button when done and click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.

Links to the main pages will now show on the sidebar area …

Pages Widget on sidebar

(Pages Widget on blog sidebar)

Practical Tip

Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar area. This is useful if you would like to display different groups of pages on your sidebar (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)

Add Links To The WordPress Blog Sidebar

Now, we’ll add a Links widget to display external links on the WordPress sidebar.

Before adding a Links widget to your sidebar, you will first need to configure the Links section inside the WP dashboard …

WordPress Links section

(WordPress Links section)

Note: Using the WordPress Links feature will be covered in other tutorials.

To add the widget, select a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …

WordPress Links Widget

(Links Widget)

Drag the Links widget to your sidebar area …

Make Links Widget active

(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 your sidebar navigation area …

WordPress Links Widget Settings

(Links Widget Settings)

You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to your sidebar 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 Links Widgets To Your Sidebar Area

(Add Multiple WordPress Links Widgets To The Sidebar Navigation Section)

You can sort links by Link title, Link rating, Link ID, or display links in Random order …

Links widget: 'Sort by:' drop-down menu

(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

( WordPress Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)

When you have finished configuring your Links Widget, click the Save button …

Links added to sidebar

(External links added to sidebar)

As the above example shows, you can display specific external links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple link lists to the sidebar.

How To Add Widgets To WordPress

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This is the end of section three of this series of tutorials on how to use WordPress widgets.

Click on this link to continue:

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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)