In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to configure several widgets in WordPress.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, news items, add content search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
Setting Up Widgets On Your Sidebar: Tutorial
In this tutorial series, we will add, configure and reorder a number of commonly-used widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Help button linking visitors to your contact details page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of your site’s main Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on the sidebar.
- Displaying news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar navigation section.
The Widgets section is located in your WP admin area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s start configuring some sidebar widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Sidebar Area
Text widgets are incredibly 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 let you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar or other widget sections, such as notices, maps and directions, news and updates and more to your site … simply by typing in text or adding HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are really versatile!)
Example: Add A Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a help button on your sidebar navigation menu 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 “help button” graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, you must first upload the button image to your server’s images folder and write down the path to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to the 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 the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create the destination page.
Create a contact page on your site and note its URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
If you’re not a technical-minded person, don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your instructions 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 sample code that you need to replace with the actual contact details …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Now, go back into your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the support button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the 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 WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget settings.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget settings. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a heading to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content area, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to test all URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button won’t 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’re pasting in code 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 option not ticked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
Once you have added your widget and formatted content, visit your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the clickable support button should display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The final step is to ensure that the destination link works. Test this by clicking the graphic button. If you are taken directly to the contact page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors go to the support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. include the part that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When inserting images into your sidebar navigation menu, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of the sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As we’ve previously mentioned, some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If the sidebar of your theme 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 graphics display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the 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 align to the left.
- Link the contact button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside your text widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this series of tutorials.
Click here to read Part 3:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)