In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In this section you are going to learn how to configure other widgets.
Adding Post Categories
Now that you have configure a text widget containing a clickable support button, let’s configure your Post Categories.
The Categories widget displays on your sidebar by default. Place this widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it in the sidebar area …
(Post Categories widget)
Before adding a Categories widget to your sidebar, we first recommend setting up your categories inside your dashboard …
(WordPress Categories)
Note: Using WordPress categories will be explained in separate tutorials.
Let’s configure the Categories settings for this widget as described below:
- In Title: type something that will make sense to visitors, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
- Check Display as dropdown if you plan to add several categories (this significantly reduces the size of your widget content by displaying all categories inside a drop-down menu). If you plan to publish posts under a few categories only, then leave the Display as dropdown box unticked. (2)
- You can leave the default settings for the remaining options, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
- Click Save when done …
(Configuring a Categories widget)
Click Visit Site or reload your page to see how your Categories widget will display to site visitors …
(WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar area)
Tips:
- Change the default Uncategorized post category to something more meaningful.
- If you use nested categories on your site, you may want to check the Show hierarchy option, otherwise leave this section as is.
- To display the number of posts published in each category, tick the Show post counts check box …
(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)
Add Recent Posts To Your Sidebar
The Recent Posts widget is normally added to your sidebar navigation section by default. All you need to do is configure the widget.
Click on your Recent Posts title bar to display the configuration settings …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget)
There’s really not much to configure. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and opt to display post dates. If you want to use the default setting for Number of posts to show, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise change the number of posts and click Save when done …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget settings)
Your most recent posts will display on the sidebar navigation section …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget added to blog sidebar)
How to create and edit posts in WordPress is explained here: How To Create A WordPress Post
Add Links To Your Site’s Main Pages In Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area
Next, we’ll add a widget to your sidebar menu for listing pages.
Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress Pages Widget)
Drag the Pages widget to your active widget area …
(Dragging and dropping a Pages widget into your sidebar)
The Pages widget lets you configure the following options:
- Title: Add a title to display above your links (e.g. “Site Info“) (1)
- Sort by: Sort how your pages display: by title (i.e. alphabetically), by page order, or by page ID. (2)
- Exclude: Prevent pages from appearing on the sidebar (3) …
(Pages Widget settings)
By default, pages will be listed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using another option, then choose a different method from the Sort by: drop-down menu …
(Pages Widget settings – sorting options)
To exclude certain pages from showing to visitors, enter the Page Ids for the pages you want to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field …
(Pages Widget settings – excluding pages)
Finding a post or page ID in WordPress is covered here: How To Find Post And Page IDs In A WP Site
Click the Save button when done and click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.
Links to your pages will now display on the sidebar section …
(WordPress Pages Widget on sidebar)
Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar. This is handy if you want to display different page groups on your sidebar navigation area (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)
Add A Links Widget
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar section for displaying external links (e.g. to useful resources, affiliate links, etc).
Before adding a Links widget to your sidebar navigation menu, we recommend first setting up the Links feature inside your dashboard …
(WordPress Links screen)
Note: We plan to provide separate step-by-step tutorials that explain how to configure the WordPress Links feature.
To add the widget, find a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …
(Links Widget)
Drag it to your sidebar …
(Making Links Widget active)
The widget offers a number of configurable options, including the ability to specify what information to show about your links and how many links you want to display on the sidebar menu …
(WordPress Links Widget Settings)
You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to your sidebar navigation menu as you want. As you will see in a moment, this lets you create and display specific lists of links on your site …
(Add Multiple WordPress Links Widgets To Your Sidebar)
You can sort links by Link title, Link rating, Link ID, or display links in Random order …
(Links widget: ‘Sort by:’ drop-down menu)
You can also create and display a list of items for a specific category, by selecting a link category from the ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu …
( WordPress Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)
When you have finished configuring the Links Widget, click the Save button …
(External links added to WordPress sidebar)
As the above example shows, you can display specific external links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple lists of links to the WordPress sidebar navigation section.
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This is the end of part 3 of this series of tutorials.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:
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