In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you will learn how to begin configuring several widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets
By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying external links, recent posts, RSS feed content, adding search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)
How To Configure Frequently-Used Sidebar Widgets: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial series, we are going to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact button linking to the contact page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of Pages.
- Display useful Links on the sidebar.
- Displaying news items with an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar.
The Widgets screen is located inside the WP administration area and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s configure a text widget …
Add A Text Widget
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 email and contact information, ads, reviews and more to your site … simply by typing in text or adding HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is versatile!)
Example: Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar area 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 note the path to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
For visitors to be taken to the contact page when they click on the support button, you must either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add your support 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, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable button.
Your instructions can be typed in a simple text file and will look something like this …
- Replace “http://www.yourdomain.com/contact-us” in the code above 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 image below shows the sections of the above sample code that you will need to replace with your actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Now, go back into your Widgets panel …
(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 the Text widget to your 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.
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 your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content area, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to test all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your 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 paste in code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
Once you have added your widget and code content, go to your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button will display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to ensure that the destination URL works. Test this by clicking the support button. You should be taken to your contact page …
(Test your clickable button to make sure it works)
Useful Tips:
If you would like the support page to display inside a new browser window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the section containing target=”_blank” in your code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation 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. As mentioned earlier, some themes may display elements differently depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the button image, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make images display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your image 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 help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links inside your widget.
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This is the end of part two of this tutorial.
Click on this link to continue:
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