In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you will learn how to configure a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Widgets
By default, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying external links, recent posts, text or HTML banners, filter content by publish dates, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Add Sidebar Widgets To WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, you will add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Support Contact image linking to the support page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding tags to your sidebar navigation area with a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar.
To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s start configuring your sidebar widgets …
Adding Text Widgets
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 can be used to add lists of favorite items, social media buttons, messages and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really useful!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Support Button To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable help button on the sidebar navigation area 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 graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the button image to a folder on your server and note down the path to your server’s image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
For someone to be taken to your contact page when the help button gets clicked, you will need to either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add a support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create the HTML 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. Basically, we just need to create the instructions linking your button image to your contact page.
Your instructions can be written a plain text editor and will 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 with the URL of your image location.
The image below shows the sections of the above code that 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, refer to this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like your clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget settings.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the URLs 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?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re 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 HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option selected)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
After adding your text widget and HTML content, visit your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your support button will display in the sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the contact button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to ensure that your destination link works. Test the button to make sure that visitors will go to your support page when clicking the button. If you are taken directly to the support page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the text widget)
Useful Tips:
If you want the contact page to open in a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in your html code):
When choosing images for your sidebar area, 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 different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your graphic image, then you may need 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 the button in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link your contact button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content in your widget.
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This is the end of part two of this tutorial.
To view Part 3, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum