In Part One of this tutorial, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you will configure a number of widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Commonly-Used WordPress Widgets
By default, your site comes with a number of built-in active widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, add content search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Add And Configure Widgets On The Sidebar: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, you will add, configure and reorder various commonly-used WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Help image linking to your support page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud section.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar menu.
The Widgets panel is located inside the WP admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings you to the Widgets screen in your browser window …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s start to configure your widgets …
Adding Text Widgets
Text widgets are quite 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)
Text widgets can be used to add policies, image links, news and updates and more to your site … simply 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 when done …
(A text widget is really useful!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, we’ll set up a support button on your sidebar 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, create or source a “help button” graphic image that you can use on your own site …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button graphic to a folder on your server and note the address of your image location.
For example …
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 the support button is clicked, 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 your support page.
Create a contact page and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create the 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 your button image to your destination URL.
Your code can be typed in a simple text file and should 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 screenshot below shows the sections of the above sample code that you will need to replace with your actual contact page and image URLs …
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, refer to this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the support button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click the save button …
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 Content area, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test your contact page and button image links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text with no 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 paste in formatted HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added the widget and content, go to the front end of your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your clickable support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button in the sidebar area of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The last step is to make sure that the destination URL works. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken to your contact page …
(Test your text widget)
Tips:
If you want a new window to open up when visitors go to the contact page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section containing target=”_blank” in the html code):
When adding images to your sidebar menu, make sure that the width of your image does not exceed the width of the 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 their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the button images, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make images display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then align to the left.
- Link the support button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside the text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial about how to use WordPress widgets.
Click here to view the rest of this tutorial:
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