In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to begin configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration needed, such as widgets for displaying external links, recent posts, newsfeeds, adding a search box, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets)
Configuring Commonly-Used Sidebar Widgets In WordPress: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, we are going to add, configure and reorder various widgets to display in your site’s sidebar, including:
- Add a clickable Support Contact graphic linking to the support page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display Links on your sidebar.
- Display a newsfeed using an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located inside your WP dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings you to the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s start configuring your widgets …
Text Widgets
Text widgets are versatile …
(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 can be used to add notices, social media buttons, reviews and more to your site … just type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, let’s set up a contact button on your sidebar navigation section 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the button image to your server’s images folder and note the URL pointing to your server’s image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
For someone to go to your contact page when the graphic button is clicked, you will need to either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create your destination page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, you just need to create the instructions linking the graphic image to your contact page.
Your code can be typed into a plain text file 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 will need to replace with the actual contact details …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Next, go back to your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want your clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget settings. 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 the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t 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 type in HTML code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
After adding the text widget and HTML code, go to the front-end of your site and refresh your web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your support button will display in your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the support button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The last step is to make sure that the destination link works. Test this by clicking the support button. If you are taken to the support page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your clickable button)
Useful Tips:
If you would like the support page to open inside a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. include the part that says: target=”_blank” in the html 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. Note that some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of your graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button image in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- You can link the help button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content in your text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial on using WordPress widgets.
To view Part 3, click this link:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now