In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you are going to begin configuring a number of widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying links to your site’s pages, recent posts, RSS feed content, add a search box, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of active widgets)
Adding Sidebar Widgets To WordPress: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:
- Adding a clickable Support Contact graphic button linking visitors to your support page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar area.
- Displaying a newsfeed with an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar area.
To use widgets, access the Widgets area located inside your WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s get started …
Adding Text Widgets
Text widgets are incredibly 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 let you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar navigation section or other widget sections, such as policies, videos, forms and more to your site … simply 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 versatile!)
Example: Add A Support Button To Your Sidebar Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a help 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 will want visitors to 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.
To display the clickable image on your site, first you must upload the image to your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to the 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 link the button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add your contact page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose 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 the graphic image to your destination URL.
Your code can be composed in a plain 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 above with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot below shows which sections of the above sample code you need to replace with your actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets area …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like 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 the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your 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 your text widget content area and click save …
Add a title to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content box, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to test all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text without 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 typing in HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your widget and content, visit your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your clickable support button will display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the contact button in the sidebar area of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The last step is to make sure that the destination link works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the support page when they click on the graphic image. You should be taken directly to your support page …
(Test the clickable button to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors click on the help button (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in the html code):
When adding images to your sidebar area, 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. As mentioned earlier, some themes can display different column widths 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 image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your theme.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want the button image to be centered inside 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 your help button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside the text widget.
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This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials.
Click here to continue:
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