In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will learn how to configure several sidebar widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Commonly-Used WordPress Blog Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, add site search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Add Commonly-Used WordPress Widgets To Your Blog Sidebar Navigation Area: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial series, you will add, configure and reorder a number of commonly-used widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact button linking visitors to your contact page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar navigation area.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located in your WP admin area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s start to configure your sidebar menu widgets …
Adding Text Widgets
Text widgets are versatile …
(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 or other widget sections, such as instructions, social media buttons, forms and more to your site … simply type in text or add 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 Clickable Help Button To Your Sidebar Area
For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on the sidebar 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, create or source a “help button” graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the button graphic to the images folder in your server and write down the path to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to your 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 then link the button image 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 the HTML code for your text widget.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your instructions can be typed in a plain text file and should 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 screenshot below shows the sections of the above code that you 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, see this tutorial:
Next, go back into your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the support button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(WordPress 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 the text widget settings.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test your contact page and button image links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re 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 type in formatted 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 not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding the text widget and code, visit the front-end of your site and refresh the web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button will display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows a clickable button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The final step is to make sure that your links work. Test this by clicking the help button. If you are taken directly to your contact page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you want a new window to open up when visitors click on the help button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the section that says: target=”_blank” in your text widget code):
When adding images to your sidebar menu, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As we’ve previously mentioned, some themes may display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of your button images, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make images display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of 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, contact form, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code in your widget.
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This is the end of part two of this tutorial.
Click on this link to keep reading:
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