In Part One of this tutorial, we cover the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you will begin configuring various frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display external links, filter posts by categories, news items, filter content by tags, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
Configuring Frequently-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Help button linking visitors to your support page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar.
- Displaying newsfeeds using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar navigation menu.
To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s begin by configuring a WordPress text widget …
Text Widgets
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)
A text widget lets you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar navigation section or other widget sections, such as events, image links, messages and more to your site … just type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is very useful!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable contact button on the 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable button image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the button graphic to a folder on your server and note the address of your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
In order for visitors to go to your contact page when they click on the help button, 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 down its URL …
Step 3 – Create the HTML code for your text widget.
If you’re not a technical-minded person, don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, you just need to create the instructions linking the button image to the destination URL.
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 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 need to replace with your actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Now, go back into your Widgets section …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your support button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the 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.
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 save …
Add a title to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the text area, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to check all links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the 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’re typing in HTML code 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 option not ticked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
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Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding the text widget and HTML code, go to the front end of your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows a clickable button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The final step is to make sure that the destination link works. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken directly to your contact page …
(Test your clickable button)
Useful Tips:
If you want a new window to open up when visitors go to your contact page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part containing target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation menu, 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 mentioned earlier, some themes may display elements differently 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 the button image, then you may need to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want your image to be centered 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 the support button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, support forum, 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 series of tutorials.
Click on this link to continue:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum