In Part One of this tutorial, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you will learn how to configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add a search box, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
How To Add And Configure Widgets On The Blog Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various frequently-used WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a clickable Support graphic button linking visitors to the contact page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of the site’s Pages.
- Display useful Links on the sidebar menu.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar.
The Widgets area is located inside your WP dashboard and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s get started …
Text Widgets
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 your sidebar or other widget sections, such as article snippets, videos, messages and more to your site … simply by typing in text or adding HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is extremely versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Contact Button To The Sidebar Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable contact button on the sidebar section 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the button image to the images folder in your server and write down the path to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
In order for visitors to be taken to your contact page when the help button is clicked, you must either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add your destination page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose the HTML code for your text widget.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions linking your button image to your contact page/helpdesk.
Your instructions can be typed into a plain text file and will 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 with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot below shows which sections of the above code 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, see this tutorial:
Go back into your Widgets area …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the clickable button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your text widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re 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: this is not necessary if you type in formatted content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
Once you have added the text widget and formatted content, visit your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button should display in your sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The last step is to make sure that the destination link works. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken directly to the contact page …
(Test your clickable button)
Tips:
If you want a new browser window to open up when visitors click on the help button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. include the part containing target=”_blank” in the html code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar section, 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. As mentioned earlier, some themes may display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make images display correctly on your theme.
(Make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
Extra 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 code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- You can link your contact button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the content in your text widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial series.
To view Part 3, click this link:
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