Tag: Using Widgets

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

In this tutorial you will begin configuring several WordPress widgets.

How To Configure Sidebar Widgets

By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, filter content by publish dates, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)

Configuring Widgets On The Blog Sidebar Navigation Menu: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets, including:

• Add a Support image linking to the contact page.
• Adding 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 main Pages.
• Display Links on the sidebar navigation menu.
• Display newsfeeds with an RSS Feed section.
• Adding a Tag Cloud section.
• Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar.

To use widgets, access the Widgets section located inside the administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This loads the Widgets panel in your browser …

(Widgets Area)

Let’s begin by configuring text widgets …

Add A Text Widget

Text widgets are incredibly useful …

(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 the sidebar or other widget sections, such as lists, images, forms and more to your site … simply 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 …

(Text widgets are really useful!)

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

For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on your sidebar navigation area 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, you will need to 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 area like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

To display the image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button graphic to a folder on your server and write down the path to your image location.

For example …

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

This information will be required in Step 3.

For someone to be taken to your 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 link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Create a contact page.

Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …

Step 3 – Create 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 code can be typed in 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 which sections of the above code you will need to replace with the actual contact details …

Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.

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

• Formatting Content Using HTML Basics For WordPress Beginners

Now, go back into your Widgets panel …

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

(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure your widget settings.

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

Add a heading to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the text area, then click Save when done …

Note: Remember to check your contact page and image URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your button won’t work.

*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***

If adding text without formatting tags like paragraph breaks, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in an HTML paragraph code (note: this is not necessary if you paste in HTML code like we’re doing in this tutorial).

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)

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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.

After adding your text widget and HTML content, go to your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display in your sidebar menu …

(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)

The screenshot above shows the support button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test the button.

The last step is to ensure that the destination URL works. Test the button to make sure that visitors will go to your support page when clicking the graphic image. If you are taken to your support page, then everything has been set up correctly …

(Test your text widget)

Tips:

If you would like a new window to open up when visitors go to the support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:

To this (i.e. insert the part that says: target=”_blank” in your text widget code):

When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation area, make sure that the width of your image doesn’t 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 elements display correctly on your theme.

(Adjust column width or reduce image size)

Extra Tips:

• If you don’t want the button image to be centered in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then align to the left.
• You can link the support button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside your widget.

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This is the end of part 2 of this series of tutorials about how to use WordPress widgets.

To view Part 3, click here:

• Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area – Part 3

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