Tag: Sidebar Widgets

In Part One of this tutorial, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.

In this section you will learn how to begin configuring various WordPress sidebar widgets.

Configuring Widgets

By default, your site comes with a number of built-in active widgets, such as widgets for displaying external links, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add a search box, etc.

(By default, your site comes with several active widgets)

How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets On The WordPress Sidebar: Tutorial

In this tutorial, we will add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets, including:

• Adding a clickable Support Contact graphic button linking visitors to the contact details page.
• Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
• Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
• Adding a list of Pages.
• Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar.
• Display a newsfeed with an RSS Feed section.
• Add tags to the sidebar using a Tag Cloud section.
• Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar.

To use widgets, access the Widgets area located inside the admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This opens the Widgets screen in your web browser …

(Widgets Section)

Let’s start by learning how to configure a text widget …

Adding Text Widgets

Text widgets are 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)

Text widgets can be used to add instructions, maps and directions, tips and more to your site … simply by typing in text or adding HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …

(Text widgets are very useful!)

Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Support Button To Your Sidebar Section

For this example, let’s set up a clickable contact button on your sidebar area that takes 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 your 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, you must first upload the button image to your server’s images folder and write down the path to your image location.

E.g. …

http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg

This information will be used in Step 3.

In order for someone to go to the contact page when the graphic button gets clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button image to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Create the support page.

Create a contact page on your site and note 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, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.

Your instructions can be typed in a simple 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 screenshot below shows the sections of the above sample code that you will need to replace with your actual contact details …

Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.

If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:

• Using Formatting Content Using HTML In WordPress

Now, go back to your Widgets area …

(Widgets Panel)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your clickable button should display.

In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …

(Text widget)

Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …

(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the text widget.

Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …

Add a title section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content box, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to test all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your clickable button won’t 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 an HTML paragraph code (note: not required if you’re pasting in formatted HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs option selected)

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Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.

After adding the widget and code, visit the front end of your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display at the top of the site’s sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on sidebar)

The screenshot above shows the contact button added to a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your widget.

The final step is to make sure that the links work. Test this by clicking the button. You should be taken directly to the support page …

(Test the text widget to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)

Useful Tips:

If you would like your support 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 text widget code from this:

To this (i.e. include the part containing target=”_blank” in your code):

When inserting images into your sidebar area, 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 elements differently depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of your graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the image size, or the width of your sidebar column to make the images display correctly on your theme.

(Adjust column width or reduce image size)

More Tips:

• If you don’t want the button to be centered 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 the support button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content in your text widget.

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This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials.

To view the rest of this tutorial series, click this link:

• How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Website – Part 3

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