In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will learn how to begin configuring several widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Sidebar Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, recent posts, news items, adding site search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
How To Add And Configure Commonly-Used Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, you are going to add, configure and reorder a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Support image linking to your contact details page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags with a Tag Cloud section.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar.
To access the Widgets panel log into your administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s get started …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Sidebar
Text widgets are incredibly 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)
Text widgets let you insert just about anything you want into your sidebar navigation section or other widget sections, such as email and contact information, maps and directions, special promotions and more to your site … just by typing in text or pasting HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is versatile!)
Example: Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable support button on your 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that you can use on your own site …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable button image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your image to a folder on your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
For visitors to be taken to the contact page when they click on the graphic button, 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 the support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
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 composed in a plain text editor and should 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 above with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot 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 all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help with basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Next, go back into your Widgets section …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like your support button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your 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 to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check your contact page and image URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text with no formatting tags like paragraph breaks, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: this is not necessary if you type in formatted content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding your widget and content, go to the front-end of your site and refresh your web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your support button will display in the sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to ensure that your destination URL works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to your support page when clicking the graphic image. You should be taken directly to the contact page …
(Test the text widget to make sure it works)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you want a new window to open up when visitors click on your support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images for your sidebar navigation section, make sure that the width of your image does not exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that some themes can display different column widths 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 graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the image size, or the width of your sidebar column to make images display correctly on your theme.
(Make sure the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button image inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- You can link your support button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external link, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside the text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial series about using Widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)