Tag: Using Widgets

In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.

In this section you are going to configure a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.

How To Configure Widgets

In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, add a search box, etc.

(By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets)

Setting Up Commonly-Used WordPress Widgets On The Blog Sidebar Navigation Menu: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial series, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets, including:

• Adding a clickable Support button linking visitors to your contact details page.
• Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
• Adding a Recent Posts section.
• Add a list of Pages.
• Display important Links on your sidebar.
• Display the latest news using an RSS Feed section.
• Adding a Tag Cloud.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar.

To use widgets, access the Widgets area located inside your dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(Widgets Menu)

This opens the Widgets area in your browser …

(Widgets Screen)

Let’s start configuring your widgets …

Text Widgets

Text widgets are incredibly useful …

(WordPress 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 can be used to add policies, images, special promotions and more to your site … just type in text or add HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …

(Text widgets are versatile!)

Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To Your Sidebar Area

For this example, we’ll set up a clickable support button on your sidebar 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 graphic image that visitors can click on …

We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar section like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

To display the clickable image on your site, first you must upload the graphic image to a folder on your server and note down the path to your image location.

E.g. …

http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg

You will need this information in Step 3.

For someone to go to your contact page when they click on the support button, 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 – Create a destination page.

Create a contact page and note the page URL …

Step 3 – Compose the code for your text widget.

Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable button.

Your code can be written 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 above with the URL of your image location.

The screenshot below shows which sections of the above sample code you will need to replace with the actual contact details …

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, see this tutorial:

• A Beginner’s Guide To Using HTML Tags In WordPress

Now, go back into your Widgets section …

(Widgets Panel)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the clickable button should display.

In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …

(Drag and drop your Text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the widget.

Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …

Add a title to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content area, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to test all links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the clickable 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 typing in HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh your browser.

Once you have added your text widget and HTML code, visit your site and refresh the web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button should display at the top of the sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on sidebar)

The above screenshot shows the contact button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your widget.

The last step is to ensure that the destination link works. Test this by clicking on the button. If you are taken directly to the contact page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …

(Test the clickable button)

Useful Tips:

If you would like a new 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 part containing target=”_blank” in the html code):

When adding images to your sidebar area, 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. As we’ve previously mentioned, some themes may display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of your graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar.

(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)

More Tips:

• If you don’t want the button image to be centered in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then align to the left.
• You can link your help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links in your widget.

***

This is the end of part two of this series of tutorials.

Click here to continue reading:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Website – Part Three

***