Tag: Using Widgets

In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.

In this tutorial you will configure a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.

Configuring Sidebar 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 that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, news items, add tag clouds, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets)

Adding Widgets To Your Blog Sidebar Navigation Section: Tutorial

In this tutorial series, you are going to add, configure and reorder various widgets to display in your site’s sidebar, including:

• Add a clickable Support graphic linking visitors to your support page.
• Add a Categories section.
• Adding a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
• Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
• Display important Links on the sidebar area.
• Displaying news items using an RSS Feed section.
• Add a list of clickable tags with a Tag Cloud.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar.

To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …

(Widgets Section)

Let’s get started …

Adding Text Widgets To The Blog Sidebar

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)

A text widget lets you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar or other widget sections, such as comments, image links, scripts and more to your site … just by typing in text or pasting HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …

(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)

Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Menu

For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on the sidebar 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, create or source a “help button” graphic image that you will use on your own site …

We’ll set up a 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 image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button image to your server and note 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 graphic button, 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 image to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Add a support page.

Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …

Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.

Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions linking the button image to your destination URL.

Your instructions can be composed in a simple 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 above 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 all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.

If you need help with basic HTML code, see this tutorial:

• HTML – A Primer For Non-Technical WordPress Users

Now, go back into your Widgets panel …

(Widgets Area)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the clickable button to display.

In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

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

(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure your widget.

Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget 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?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the text area, then click Save when done …

Note: Remember to check your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button will not work.

*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***

If adding text with no formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: this is not necessary if you type in formatted HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the browser.

Once you have added your text widget and formatted content, go to your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display at the top of the 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 button.

The final step is to make sure that the destination link works. Test this by clicking on the graphic button. If you are taken directly to your support page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …

(Test your text widget to ensure you’ve set everything up correctly)

Tips:

If you would like a new browser 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 html code):

When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation section, make sure that the width of the 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 elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the image size, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your theme.

(Make sure the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)

More Tips:

• If you don’t want your button to be centered inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
• Link your help 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 in the widget.

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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial series.

To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:

• Adding Widgets To The Sidebar Navigation Section – Part 3

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