How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3

Learn how to add and configure a number of useful widgets on your WordPress sidebar …

Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar AreaIn Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.

In this section we are going to show you how to configure other frequently-used sidebar widgets.

Adding Categories To Your Sidebar

Now that you have configure a text widget containing a clickable support button, let’s configure a widget for displaying Post Categories on the sidebar.

The Categories widget displays on the sidebar navigation section by default. All you have to do, therefore, is place the widget wherever you want your post categories to display by clicking and dragging it in your sidebar area …

Categories Widget

(WordPress Categories widget)

Practical Tip

your categories …

WordPress Post Categories Screen

(Post Categories Panel)

Note: We are currently putting together tutorials on how to set up and use WordPress categories.

Configure the Categories settings for your widget as described below:

  • In Title: type something that will make sense to visitors, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
  • If you have too many categories, check Display as dropdown (this significantly reduces the length of the widget content by displaying all categories in a drop-down menu). Leave the box unticked if you want a list of all categories to display on your sidebar. (2)
  • You can leave the remaining options unticked, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
  • Click Save when finished …

Configuring a WordPress Categories Widget

(Categories widget settings)

Click Visit Site or refresh your page to see how the content will display to site visitors …

WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar section

(Categories widget added to sidebar)

Tip

Tips:

  • Change the default Uncategorized post category to something more meaningful.
  • If you use nested categories on your site, you may want to check the Show hierarchy option, otherwise leave this section as is.
  • To display the number of posts published in each category, enable the Show post counts check box …

Category widget options - Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled

(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)

Add Recent Posts To The Sidebar Area

The Recent Posts widget displays on the sidebar by default. All you need to do is configure this widget.

Click on its title bar to display the configuration settings …

Recent Posts widget

(Recent Posts WordPress widget)

There’s really not much to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and opt to display post dates. If you want to use the default setting for Number of posts to show, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise enter a number of posts to show and click Save when done …

Recent Posts widget settings

(Recent Posts widget settings)

The number of posts you have specified will be listed on your sidebar navigation menu …

Recent Posts widget added to sidebar navigation section

(Recent Posts WordPress widget on sidebar navigation section)

To learn how to create WordPress Posts, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A Post In WordPress

Add A Pages Widget

Next, we’ll add a widget to your sidebar for listing pages.

Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …

Pages Widget

(WordPress Pages Widget)

Drag the Pages widget to your active widget area …

Adding a Pages widget to the sidebar area

(Adding a Pages widget to the sidebar menu)

The Pages widget allows you to configure the following options:

  • Title: Add a title to display above your links (e.g. “Pages“) (1)
  • Sort by: Sort how your pages display: by title (i.e. alphabetically), by page order, or by page ID. (2)
  • Exclude: Use this setting to prevent pages from showing on the sidebar menu (3) …

Pages Widget settings

(Pages Widget settings)

By default, pages will be listed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using one of the other options, then select a different method in the Sort by: drop-down menu …

WordPress Pages Widget settings - sort options

(WordPress Pages Widget settings – sort options)

To exclude certain pages from displaying on the sidebar, type or paste in their Page Ids separated by commas into the Exclude field …

Pages Widget settings - exclude pages

(WordPress Pages Widget settings – excluding pages)

For a step-by-step tutorial on how to find a WordPress post or page ID, go here: How To Find WordPress Post And Page IDs

Click the Save button when done and click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize your widget.

Links to your blog’s pages will now display on the sidebar …

Pages Widget on sidebar

(Pages Widget on sidebar)

Practical Tip

Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar. This is helpful if you would like to display different groups of pages on the sidebar navigation menu (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)

Add A Links Widget To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar

Now, let’s add a Links widget to your sidebar menu.

Before adding a Links widget to the sidebar, we recommend configuring the Links feature inside your WordPress dashboard first …

WordPress Links section

(WordPress Links screen)

Note: How to set up WordPress Links will be covered in separate tutorials.

To add the widget, find a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …

Links Widget

(Links Widget)

Drag it to your sidebar …

Make Links Widget active

(Making Links Widget active)

The Links widget offers a number of configurable options, including the ability to specify what information to show about your links and how many links you want to display on your sidebar …

Links Widget Settings

(Links Widget Settings)

You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to the sidebar as you want. As you will see in a moment, this lets you create and display specific lists of links on your site …

Add Multiple WordPress Links Widgets To Your Sidebar Area

(Add Multiple Links Widgets To The Sidebar)

You can sort links by Link title, Link rating, Link ID, or display links in Random order …

WordPress Links widget: 'Sort by:' drop-down menu

(Links widget: ‘Sort by:’ drop-down menu)

You can also create and display a list of items for a specific category, by selecting a link category from the ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu …

Links widget: 'Select Link Category' drop-down menu

( Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)

When you have finished configuring the Links Widget, click the Save button …

Links added to WordPress sidebar menu

(External links added to sidebar)

As the above example shows, you can display specific external links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple lists of links to your sidebar.

Adding WordPress Widgets To The Site

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This is the end of part three of this tutorial.

Click here to continue:

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