In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will learn how to configure various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in active widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add content search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Adding Widgets To The Sidebar Menu: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder various widgets, including:
- Adding a Help graphic linking visitors to the help page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding tag links with a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar area.
The Widgets panel is located inside your admin area by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s begin configuring your sidebar menu widgets …
Text Widgets
Text widgets are incredibly 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)
A text widget lets you insert just about anything you want into your sidebar or other widget sections, such as email and contact information, maps and directions, scripts and more to your site … just type in text or paste HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …
(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Contact Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on your sidebar 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 “help button” graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation menu 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 the image to a folder on your server and note down the address of your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
In order for visitors to go to the contact page when they click on the support button, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link your button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create a support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable button.
Your code can be typed in a plain text editor 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 the actual web addresses …
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 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 your Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your text widget settings.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the large text box, 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 clickable button will not 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 code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added the text widget and HTML code, go to the front end of your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button will display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to ensure that the destination URL works. Test this by clicking on the graphic button. You should be taken directly to your contact page …
(Test your text widget)
Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors click on the support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. include the section that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images for your sidebar navigation section, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of the 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 layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want the image to be centered in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML 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 link, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in your widget.
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This is the end of part two of this series of tutorials about using Widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group