In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you are going to learn how to begin configuring various frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Blog Sidebar Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets that let you display external links, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
Adding Commonly-Used Sidebar Widgets To WordPress: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, we are going to add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a clickable Support graphic linking visitors to your contact page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of your site’s most important Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on the sidebar.
- Displaying news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar.
The Widgets area is located in your WordPress admin area and can be accessed from the administration menu by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings you to the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
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)
A text widget lets you insert just about anything you want into your sidebar menu or other widget sections, such as lists, image links, scripts and more to your site … just type in text or paste HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …
(A text widget is really useful!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Help Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, we’ll set up a support button on your sidebar navigation area 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 visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar navigation area 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.
For visitors to go to the contact page when the graphic button gets clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add your contact page.
Create a contact page on your site and note its URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions linking the button image to your contact page.
Your code can be typed in a simple text file and will 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 screenshot below shows the sections of the above sample code that 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 understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Next, go back to your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its options. 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 your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the large text box, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to check your contact page and image links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button will not 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 paragraphs (note: not required if you type in HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your text widget and HTML content, go to the front-end of your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the clickable support button will display at the top of the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the support button in the sidebar section of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The final step is to ensure that the clickable button works. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken to your contact page …
(Test the text widget to ensure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you want a new window to open up when visitors click on your support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section that says: target=”_blank” in the html code):
When inserting images into your sidebar navigation section, make sure that the width of your image doesn’t exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of your graphic images, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make images display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)
More 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 HTML code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- 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 content in the widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this series of tutorials on using Widgets.
To continue, click this link:
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