In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this section you are going to begin configuring a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying external links, recent posts, news items, adding search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Setting Up Commonly-Used WordPress Widgets On Your Blog Sidebar Area: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will add, configure and reorder s number of widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Contact Us button linking visitors to the help page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Add a list of Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar section.
- Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar section.
The Widgets section is located inside the WordPress administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s begin configuring some 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 area or other widget sections, such as article snippets, maps and directions, special promotions and more to your site … just 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 when done …
(Text widgets are versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable help button on your sidebar navigation menu that will take 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 you will want visitors to click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the graphic image to your server and note down the URL pointing to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
In order for someone to be taken to the contact page when they click on the support button, you must either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link your button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add the contact page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Create the code for your text widget.
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 instructions can be written 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 image below shows the sections of the above code that you need to replace with the actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help with basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(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 widget settings.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its settings. 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 section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the large text box, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text with no formatting tags, 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 type in HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
After adding the widget and HTML content, visit your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the clickable support button should display in your sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The last step is to make sure that the links work. Test this by clicking the button. If you are taken to your contact page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget to ensure you’ve set up everything correctly)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you want a new browser window to open up when visitors go to the support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation 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. As we’ve previously explained, 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 is narrower than the width of your graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your image inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link your support button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside the text widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial about how to use WordPress widgets.
To continue, click here:
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