How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3

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

How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Sidebar Navigation SectionIn Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.

In this tutorial we will continue configuring other widgets.

Add Categories To The Sidebar Navigation Menu

Now that you know how to configure a text widget containing a clickable contact button, let’s configure a widget for your Categories.

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

Post Categories Widget

(Post Categories widget)

Practical Tip

Before adding a Categories widget to your sidebar section, we recommend setting up your categories inside the WP dashboard …

Categories Screen

(WordPress Categories)

Note: We plan to create separate tutorials about how to configure and use post categories in WordPress.

Configure your Categories widget settings as shown below:

  • In Title: type something that will make sense to your visitors, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
  • Check Display as dropdown if you have too many categories (this significantly reduces the size of your content by displaying all categories in a drop-down menu). If you plan to publish posts under a few categories only, then leave the Display as dropdown box unchecked. (2)
  • Leave the default settings for the remaining options, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
  • Click Save to update your settings …

Configuring a WordPress Categories Widget

(Configuring a WordPress Categories widget)

Load the site in your browser or refresh the page to see how the sidebar categories will look to your site visitors …

Categories widget added to sidebar

(Categories widget added to sidebar navigation menu)

Useful 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 on your site, tick 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 A Recent Posts Section

The Recent Posts widget is added to your sidebar navigation menu by default. All you need to do is configure the widget.

Click on its title bar to configure its settings …

Recent Posts WordPress widget

(Recent Posts WordPress widget)

There’s not much to configure. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and opt to display post dates. If you’re happy with the default Number of posts to show setting, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise enter a number of posts to show and click Save

Recent Posts widget settings

(Recent Posts widget settings)

Your most recent posts will display on your sidebar …

Recent Posts widget on sidebar

(Recent Posts WordPress widget on sidebar section)

We provide a tutorial about how to create and edit a WordPress Post here: How To Create A New WP Post

Adding A Pages Widget

Next, we’ll add a widget to your sidebar section to display page links.

Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …

Pages Widget

(Pages Widget)

Drag the Pages widget to your active widget area …

Inserting a Pages widget into the sidebar navigation menu

(Inserting a Pages widget into the sidebar navigation section)

The Pages widget lets you configure the following settings:

  • Title: Add a title to display above your links (e.g. “Useful Information“) (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 your sidebar (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 choose a different method from the Sort by: drop-down menu …

Pages Widget settings - sort options

(Pages Widget settings – item sorting options)

To prevent certain pages from displaying in your sidebar, simply type their Page Ids separated by commas into the Exclude field of the Pages widget …

Pages Widget settings - exclude pages

(Pages Widget settings – excluding pages by ID)

We provide a tutorial about how to find a post or page ID in WordPress here: How To Find Page And Post IDs In A WP Blog

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

Links to your site’s pages will now appear on your sidebar …

WordPress Pages Widget on blog sidebar

(Pages Widget on blog sidebar)

Useful Tip

Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar section. This is useful if you need to display separate page groups on the sidebar (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)

Display Links On The WordPress Sidebar

Now, let’s add a widget to your WordPress sidebar section to display links to external resources.

Before adding the Links widget to the sidebar section, you will first need to configure the Links section inside the WordPress dashboard …

WordPress Links screen

(WordPress Links screen)

Note: Setting up and using Links will be explained in other tutorials.

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

Links Widget

(WordPress Links Widget)

Drag it to your sidebar …

Making Links Widget active

(Making Links Widget active)

The 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 your 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 The Sidebar

(Add Multiple Links Widgets To Your 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 …

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

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

When you have finished configuring the Links Widget, click the Save button to update your settings. Your links will display immediately on your WordPress sidebar section …

Links added to WordPress sidebar

(Links added to WordPress sidebar menu)

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

How To Use WordPress Widgets

***

This is the end of section 3 of this tutorial series about using WordPress widgets.

Click here to continue:

***

"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie