Tag: Using Widgets

In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.

In this section you will begin configuring a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.

Sidebar Widget Configuration

In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets, such as widgets for displaying external links, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, adding site search features, etc.

(By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)

How To Add And Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets On Your Sidebar Navigation Section: Tutorial

In this tutorial series, we will add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:

• Adding a Help image linking visitors to your support page.
• Add a Categories section.
• Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
• Add a list of your site’s most important Pages.
• Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar navigation section.
• Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
• Adding clickable tags with a Tag Cloud.
• Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar section.

The Widgets section is located in the WP admin area and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This opens the Widgets section in your browser …

(Widgets Section)

Let’s begin configuring some widgets …

Adding Text Widgets

Text widgets are quite useful …

(WordPress 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 of favorite items, ads, reviews and more to your site … simply by typing in text or inserting HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …

(Text widgets are versatile!)

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

For this example, we’ll set up a clickable support button on your sidebar navigation area 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 your visitors to click on …

We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar section 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 image to the images folder in your server and note 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 must 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 – Add your support page.

Create a contact page and note its URL …

Step 3 – Compose 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 linking your graphic image to your contact page.

Your code can be typed into a simple text file 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 the sections of the above code that you need to replace with the 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, refer to this tutorial:

• An Formatting Content With HTML Primer For Non-Geek WordPress Users

Now, go back to your Widgets panel …

(Widgets Area)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the clickable button should display.

In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …

(Text widget)

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

(Drag-and-drop your Text widget)

Step 5 – Configure your widget.

Click on the 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 save …

Add a title section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content area, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to test all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the button will not 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 paragraphs (note: not required if you’re pasting 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 checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)

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Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.

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

(Clickable button widget on sidebar)

The above screenshot shows the button in the sidebar navigation menu of a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test the button.

The final step is to ensure that the links work. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to your help page when clicking the button. If you are taken to your support page, then everything has been set up correctly …

(Test your clickable button)

Useful Tips:

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

To this (i.e. insert the section that says: target=”_blank” in the html code):

When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation area, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As mentioned earlier, some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make images display correctly on your sidebar.

(Adjust column width or reduce image size)

More 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 left-aligned.
• Link your support button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the content inside your widget.

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This is the end of part two of this tutorial.

Click on this link to read the rest of this tutorial series:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In Your Site – Part Three

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