In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will learn how to configure various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
Configuring Frequently-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several built-in active widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, newsfeeds, filter content by publish dates, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of active widgets)
Adding Sidebar Widgets In WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, you will add, configure and reorder a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets to display in the site’s sidebar section, including:
- Add a Support button linking to your contact page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of Pages.
- Display useful Links on the sidebar section.
- Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets area can be easily accessed inside the WP administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s start to configure some widgets …
Add A Text Widget To Your Blog 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 your sidebar or other widget sections, such as instructions, videos, forms 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 …
(Text widgets are versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a help button on the sidebar that takes 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 “help button” graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the button image to the images folder in your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
In order for visitors to go 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 link the button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create your destination page.
Create a contact page and note its URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your code 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 with the URL of your image location.
The image below shows the sections of the above sample code that you need to replace with your actual contact page and image URLs …
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:
Next, go back into your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget options. 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?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check all URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text with no formatting tags, 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’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 checked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
Once you have added the widget and HTML code, visit your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button will display in your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support contact button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to make sure that your clickable button works. Test this by clicking the help button. You should be taken directly to your contact page …
(Test the text widget to ensure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Tips:
If you want your contact page to open 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. include the part that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation 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 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 the graphic images, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button image inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- You can link the support button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the content inside your widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial.
Click here to continue reading:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)