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 Widgets In WordPressIn Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.

In this tutorial you are going to configure other WordPress widgets.

Add Categories

Now that you have configure a text widget containing a support button, let’s configure your Post Categories.

The Categories widget displays on your sidebar menu by default. All you need to do, therefore, is place this widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it on the sidebar widget area …

WordPress Post Categories Widget

(Post Categories widget)

Tip

Before adding a Categories widget to the sidebar, we recommend configuring your categories inside your dashboard …

WordPress Post Categories Screen

(WordPress Post Categories Screen)

Note: We are currently putting together tutorials on configuring post categories in WordPress.

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

  • In Title: type something that your visitors will understand, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
  • Check Display as dropdown if you have too many categories (this significantly reduces the length of the 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. (2)
  • Leave the default settings for the remaining options, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
  • Click Save when finished …

Configuring a WordPress Categories Widget

(WordPress Categories widget settings)

Load the site in your browser or refresh your page to see how the Categories widget will look to your visitors …

WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar

(Categories widget added to sidebar)

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 option as is.
  • To display the number of posts published in each category on your site, 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 A Recent Posts Section To The Sidebar

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

Click on the Recent Posts widget title bar to configure its settings …

Recent Posts WordPress widget

(Recent Posts WordPress widget)

There is not much to set up in this widget. 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 enter the number of posts to show and click Save when done …

Recent Posts WordPress widget settings

(Recent Posts widget settings)

Your most recent posts will be listed on your sidebar …

Recent Posts widget displayed on sidebar section

(Recent Posts widget displayed on sidebar)

To learn how to create a WordPress Post, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A Post In WordPress

Display Your Site’s Main Pages

Next, let’s add a widget to your sidebar to display page links.

Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …

WordPress Pages Widget

(Pages Widget)

Drag the Pages widget to your sidebar widget area …

Inserting a Pages widget into your sidebar navigation section

(Inserting a Pages widget into the sidebar)

The Pages widget lets you configure the following options:

  • Title: Add a title to display above your links (e.g. “Site Information“) (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 hide pages on the sidebar navigation menu (3) …

Pages Widget settings

(Pages Widget settings)

By default, pages will be listed 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 – sorting options)

To prevent certain pages from displaying on your sidebar, enter their Page Ids separated by commas into the Exclude field of the widget …

Pages Widget settings - exclude pages

(WordPress Pages Widget settings – excluding pages)

We provide a step-by-step tutorial about how to find a post or page ID in WordPress here: How To Find The WordPress Page Or Post ID

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

Links to the pages will now display on your sidebar …

WordPress Pages Widget on sidebar

(Pages Widget on blog sidebar)

Useful Tip

Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to your sidebar section. This is handy if you want to display separate page groups on the sidebar (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)

Add Links To The Sidebar Section

Now, let’s add a widget that will display external links on the sidebar menu.

Before adding a Links widget to your sidebar, we recommend setting up the Links feature first …

WordPress Links screen

(WordPress Links screen)

Note: Configuring WordPress Links will be covered in other tutorials.

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

Links Widget

(Links Widget)

Drag the Links widget to your sidebar area …

Making 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 the sidebar menu …

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 WordPress Links Widgets To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu

(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

(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

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

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

Links added to WordPress sidebar

(External links added to WordPress sidebar area)

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 your sidebar navigation area.

How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In The Blog

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This is the end of part 3 of this tutorial.

Click on this link to continue:

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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