In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you will configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
Widget Configuration
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, add content search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Set Up Widgets On The Blog Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Help image linking to your contact details page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display useful Links on the sidebar menu.
- Display the latest news with an RSS Feed section.
- Adding clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar.
To access the Widgets panel log into your WordPress administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s get started …
Add A Text Widget
Text widgets are 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 lets you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar or other widget sections, such as events, ads, forms and more to your site … just by typing in text or pasting 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 very useful!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on your sidebar section that will take 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 can use on your own site …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable button image on your site, first you must upload the button image to your server’s images folder and note down the address of your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
In order for someone to be taken to the contact page when the help button is clicked, you will need to 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 the support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note its URL …
Step 3 – Compose 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 graphic image to the contact page/helpdesk.
Your instructions can be typed into a plain 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 screenshot below shows the sections of the above code that you need to replace with the actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help with basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Next, go back to your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the 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 top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the URLs 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?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test all 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 without formatting tags like paragraph breaks, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: not required if you paste in HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding the widget and formatted content, go to your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your clickable support button will display at the top of the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The final step is to make sure that your destination URL works. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken to the support page …
(Test your text widget)
Useful Tips:
If you would like your contact page to open inside a new browser window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section that says: target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When choosing images for your sidebar area, make sure that the width of your image does not exceed the width of the sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As we’ve previously mentioned, some themes can 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 button images, then you may have to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
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 left-aligned.
- Link your support button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside the widget.
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This is the end of part two of this tutorial about how to use Widgets.
Click here to view the rest of this tutorial series:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group