In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you will learn how to configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
How To Configure Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration needed, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, recent posts, RSS feed content, adding content search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Adding Widgets To The Sidebar: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder various frequently-used WordPress widgets to display in the site’s sidebar navigation section, including:
- Add a clickable Contact Us graphic button linking to the help page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of Pages.
- Display important Links on the sidebar menu.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags with a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar navigation section.
To use widgets, access the Widgets section located inside the admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets area in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s begin configuring your widgets …
Add A Text Widget To The Sidebar
Text widgets are quite 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 the sidebar or other widget sections, such as article snippets, social media buttons, news and updates 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 when done …
(Text widgets are really useful!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Support Button To The Sidebar Section
For this example, we’ll set up a help button on your sidebar 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that you can use on your own site …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display an image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the button graphic to the images folder in your server and write down the address of your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
In order for someone to be taken to the contact page when the graphic button gets clicked, 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 – Create a destination page.
Create a contact page and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Compose the 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, you just need to create the instructions linking the graphic image to your contact page.
Your instructions 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 with the URL of your image location.
The image 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 the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Next, go back into your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the 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 the text widget settings.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click save …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content box, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test your contact page and button image URLs 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 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’re typing in formatted HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added the widget and code, visit the front end of your site and refresh your web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button should display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the contact button in the sidebar area of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to ensure that your destination link works. Test this by clicking on the button. If you are taken directly to your contact page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test the text widget)
Useful Tips:
If you would like 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 button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images for your sidebar section, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that some themes can 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 images, then you may have to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make graphics display correctly on your theme.
(Make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want the image to be centered in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then align to the left.
- You can link the contact button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside your widget.
***
This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial.
Click here to continue:
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)