In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you are going to learn how to begin configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration needed, such as widgets for displaying links to your site’s pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, adding tag clouds, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets)
How To Add Widgets To Your Sidebar Section: Tutorial
In this tutorial, we are going to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:
- Adding a Contact Us graphic button linking visitors to the contact page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of your site’s most important Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar navigation area.
- Display the latest news using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on the sidebar navigation section.
The Widgets panel is located inside the WP admin area and can be easily accessed from the WordPress administration menu by choosing Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s start to configure some widgets …
Add A Text Widget To The Sidebar
Text widgets are incredibly useful …
(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 email and contact information, maps and directions, tips and more to your site … just by typing in text or inserting 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 very useful!)
Example: Add A Support Button To The Sidebar Navigation Area Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable help button on the 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 menu like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable button image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button graphic to a folder on your server and note the address of your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
In order for visitors to be taken to your contact page when they click on the help button, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create a support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note its URL …
Step 3 – Compose the code for your text widget.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions linking your graphic image to your destination URL.
Your code can be written a plain text file and should 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 which sections of the above code 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 with basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the support button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget settings.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget settings. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the 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 Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the 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 an HTML paragraph code (note: not required if you’re pasting in formatted content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not checked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding the text widget and formatted content, visit the front end of your site and refresh your web 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 sidebar)
The screenshot above shows a clickable button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to make sure that the destination link works. Test the button to make sure that visitors will go to the contact page when they click on the button. If you are taken directly to your contact page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget)
Tips:
If you would like a new window to open up when visitors go to the contact page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. include the section that says: target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation menu, 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 elements differently depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra 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 code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- Link your contact button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content inside the widget.
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This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials on using WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to access Part Three:
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