In Part One of this tutorial, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you are going to begin configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets for displaying external links, recent posts, newsfeeds, filter content by tags, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Set Up Sidebar Widgets: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial series, we will add, configure and reorder various widgets, including:
- Adding a Help graphic linking to your contact page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar.
- Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar navigation section.
The Widgets area can be accessed inside the dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s start configuring your widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Sidebar
Text widgets are incredibly 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 can be used to add comments, videos, news and updates and more to your site … simply type in text or add HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To The Sidebar Area Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable support button on the sidebar 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that you will want visitors to click on …
We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, you must first upload the button image to your server’s images folder and write down the path to your server’s image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
In order for visitors to go to your contact page when the help button gets 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 your button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add the support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Compose the HTML code for your text widget.
If you’re not a technical-minded person, don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions linking the button image to the contact page/helpdesk.
Your code can be typed into a simple text editor and should 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 which sections of the above sample code you need to replace with the actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Go back into your Widgets section …
(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, find a 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 Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your text widget settings.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings. 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 your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to check all links 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: not required if you’re pasting in HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
After adding the widget and code, visit the front-end of your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button will display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button in the sidebar section of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The final step is to make sure that your destination link works. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken to your support page …
(Test your clickable button to ensure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors go to your support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar area, 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. Note that some themes may display elements differently 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 your graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make the images display correctly on your sidebar.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want your button image to be centered in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- Link the contact button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content in your widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial series.
Click on this link to continue:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum