In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you will learn how to begin configuring various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Widget Configuration
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets, such as widgets for displaying links to your site’s pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, filter content by publish dates, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
How To Add Commonly-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets To WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, we are going to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a clickable Help graphic button linking to the contact details page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar navigation menu.
- Displaying news items with an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets section is located in the WordPress dashboard and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This opens the Widgets panel into your browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s start configuring your widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Blog Sidebar
Text widgets are incredibly versatile …
(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 your sidebar or other widget sections, such as policies, image links, tips and more to your site … just type in text or paste 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: Add A Help Button To The Sidebar Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a help button on the sidebar that takes 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 your visitors to 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.
Upload the button image to your server and write down the path to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to your contact page when they click on the graphic button, 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 – Create a support page.
Create a contact page and note its URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
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 for your clickable button.
Your code can be typed into 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 with the URL of your image location.
The image below shows which sections of the above code you need to replace with the actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Next, 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 button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget settings.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. 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 to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to check all URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button won’t 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 an HTML paragraph code (note: not required if you’re pasting in HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding the widget and HTML content, visit the front-end of your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button will display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows a clickable button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The final step is to make sure that the links work. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to your contact page when they click on the graphic image. If you are taken to your support page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget)
Useful Tips:
If you want the contact page to open in a new browser window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part that says: target=”_blank” in your text widget code):
When choosing images for your sidebar navigation section, 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 explained, some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make images display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button in 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).
- You can link the help button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside your widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial about using WordPress widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, 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