In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you are going to begin configuring several WordPress widgets.
How To Configure Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets, such as widgets that let you display external links, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, add tag clouds, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets)
How To Add Commonly-Used Widgets To Your Blog Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder various widgets, including:
- Add a Support graphic linking to your support page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar navigation area.
- Displaying news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar navigation section.
To use widgets, access the Widgets area located inside your WordPress admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets section into your browser window …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s start configuring your sidebar menu widgets …
Text Widgets
Text widgets are 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)
A text widget lets you insert just about anything you want into your sidebar navigation section or other widget sections, such as notices, videos, messages and more to your site … just type in text or insert HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, let’s set up a clickable contact button on your sidebar navigation section 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 visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the image to the images folder in your server and note the URL pointing to your server’s image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
In order for visitors 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 then link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add the support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose the code for your text widget.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions linking your button image to the destination URL.
Your instructions can be written a simple text file and will 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 web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help with basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want your button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the 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 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 heading 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: Make sure to check your contact page and image links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re 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 pasting in HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
Once you have added the widget and formatted content, visit your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button should display at the top of the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The final step is to make sure that your links work. Test your button to make sure that visitors will go to your support page when they click on the button. You should be taken directly to the support page …
(Test your text widget to ensure you’ve set up everything 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 button code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the section that says: target=”_blank” in your 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 may 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 the graphic images, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements display correctly on your theme.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button image inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link the contact button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links in the widget.
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This is the end of part two of this tutorial series about using Widgets.
To keep reading, click here:
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