Category: WordPress Training Manual

In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.

In this section you will configure a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.

How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets

By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying external links, recent posts, news items, filter content by tags, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets)

Configuring Frequently-Used Sidebar Widgets: Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder various commonly-used widgets, including:

• Add a clickable Help button linking visitors to your help page.
• Add a Categories section.
• Add a Recent Posts section.
• Adding a list of Pages.
• Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar menu.
• Add an RSS Feed section.
• Adding a Tag Cloud.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar.

The Widgets section is located in the WordPress administration area and can be easily accessed from the WP dashboard menu by selecting Appearance > Widgets …

(Widgets Menu)

This loads the Widgets section in your browser …

(Widgets Screen)

Let’s begin to configure some sidebar menu widgets …

Add A Text Widget

Text widgets are versatile …

(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)

Text widgets can be used to add lists, social media buttons, messages and more to your site … simply type in text or paste HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …

(A text widget is extremely versatile!)

Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section

For this example, we’ll 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, create or source a graphic image that visitors can click on …

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 image on your site, first you must upload the graphic image to the images folder in your server and note 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 support button is clicked, 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 – Create the code for your text widget.

Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions linking your button image to the destination URL.

Your instructions can be typed into a plain 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 the sections of the above code that you need to replace with the 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:

• A Basic Guide To HTML For Beginners

Next, go back into your Widgets area …

(Widgets Screen)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the clickable button to display.

In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the 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 the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the text area, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to test all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button will not work.

*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***

If 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 paragraphs (note: this is not necessary if you type in HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs box not checked)

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the browser.

After adding the widget and content, go to your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …

(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)

The screenshot above shows the support contact button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test the widget.

The final step is to make sure that your destination URL works. Test the button to make sure that visitors will go to your contact page when clicking the button. If you are taken to the support page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …

(Test your text widget)

Text Widgets – Useful Tips:

If you want a new window to open up when visitors go to the support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the text widget code from this:

To this (i.e. insert the part that says: target=”_blank” in your code):

When choosing images to add to your sidebar area, make sure that the width of your image does not exceed the width of your 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 layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your button image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar.

(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)

Extra Tips:

• If you don’t want to center your button inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be left-aligned.
• You can link your support button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the content in the text widget.

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This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials about how to use Widgets.

To continue, click this link:

• How To Add Widgets To The WordPress Sidebar Section – Part 3

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