In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you will begin configuring several sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration needed, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, filter content by publish dates, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
How To Set Up Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets On Your Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various commonly-used widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact graphic linking to the contact page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar menu.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding clickable tags using a Tag Cloud section.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located inside your WP administration area and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your browser window …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s start to configure some widgets …
Adding Text Widgets
Text widgets are incredibly versatile …
(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 navigation menu or other widget sections, such as comments, images, reviews and more to your site … just type in text or paste HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …
(Text widgets are really versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, let’s set up a help button on the sidebar navigation menu that will take your 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 you will want visitors to click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, you must first upload the button image to a folder on your server and note the URL pointing to your server’s image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to the contact page when they click on the graphic button, you will need to 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 – Add the destination page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Create the code for your text widget.
If you’re not a technical-minded person, don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable button.
Your instructions can be typed in a plain text editor and will 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 which sections of the above code you will need to replace with the actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Panel)
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 top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a heading to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the text area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text without formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: not required if you type in HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your widget and content, go to the front-end of your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button will display at the top of the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows a clickable button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The last step is to ensure that your clickable button works. Test this by clicking the graphic button. If you are taken to the support page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test your clickable button to ensure it works)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you would like your contact page to display inside a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in your code):
When inserting images into your sidebar navigation menu, make sure that the width of your image doesn’t exceed the width of the 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 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 graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Make sure the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want the button to be centered in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link your support button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links in your widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial series.
To view Part Three, click this link:
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