In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you are going to configure various WordPress widgets.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with a number of built-in active widgets, such as widgets for displaying external links, filter posts by categories, news items, adding a search box, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Configure Commonly-Used WordPress Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Section: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets to display in the site’s sidebar menu, including:
- Add a Help graphic linking to the help page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar section.
- Displaying a newsfeed using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags with a Tag Cloud section.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar.
To use widgets, access the Widgets panel located inside the WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s begin to configure some sidebar widgets …
Add A Text Widget To Your Sidebar
Text widgets are incredibly useful …
(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 your sidebar section or other widget sections, such as quotes, videos, special promotions and more to your site … simply type in text or add HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a support button on your 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 graphic image that you will use on your own site …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button image to a folder on your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
For someone to be taken to your contact page when they click on the support button, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add your contact 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 your graphic image to your destination URL.
Your code can be composed in 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 code you need to replace with your actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Now, go back to your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want your clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget settings.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget 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 title section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to test your contact page and image links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the 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’re pasting in HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
Once you have added your widget and content, go to the front end of your site and refresh your web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your clickable support button will display at the top of your sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the button in the sidebar navigation menu of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to ensure that your destination URL works. Test this by clicking on the button. If you are taken to your contact page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget to ensure it works)
Tips:
If you would like the support page to display in a new window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section that says: target=”_blank” in the html code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar section, make sure that the width of your image doesn’t exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that 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 button images, then you may have to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the image in 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 the help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content inside your widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this series of tutorials.
To continue, click here:
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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