In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you will learn how to configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, recent posts, newsfeeds, add a search box, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets)
Adding And Configuring Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Menu: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets, including:
- Adding a Contact Us graphic button linking visitors to your contact details page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of your site’s most important Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar navigation section.
To use widgets, access the Widgets section located inside your WP administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s begin configuring your sidebar menu widgets …
Add A Text Widget To The Blog Sidebar
Text widgets are quite useful …
(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 lets you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar or other widget sections, such as policies, maps and directions, reviews 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 really versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Help Button To Your Sidebar Area
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable help button on the sidebar navigation section that will take 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 graphic image that you will want your visitors to click on …
We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the image to your server’s images folder and write down the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
For someone to be taken to the contact page when the help button is clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create your support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions linking the button image to the contact page.
Your instructions can be composed in a simple text editor 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 above with the URL of your image location.
The image below shows the sections of the above sample code that you need to replace with your actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Now, go back into your Widgets section …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the support button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …
Add a heading to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the text area, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text with no formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in an HTML paragraph code (note: this is not necessary if you’re typing in formatted HTML code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your text widget and content, visit 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 sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The final step is to make sure that the links work. Test this by clicking on the graphic button. You should be taken to your support page …
(Test the text widget to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you would like your support page to open in a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section that says: target=”_blank” in your code):
When inserting images into your sidebar menu, make sure that the width of your image doesn’t exceed the width of the sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As we’ve previously mentioned, some themes may display elements differently 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 images, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements display correctly on your theme.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want your button to be centered inside 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).
- You can link your help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content inside the text widget.
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This is the end of part two of this tutorial.
Click here to view Part Three:
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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