Tag: Using Widgets

In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.

In this section you will learn how to begin configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.

How To Configure Sidebar Widgets

By default, your site comes with several pre-installed 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 content search features, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets)

How To Add Widgets To The WordPress Sidebar Navigation Section: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial series, we will add, configure and reorder various widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:

• Add a clickable Help button linking visitors to the help page.
• Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
• Adding a Recent Posts section.
• Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
• Display useful Links on your sidebar.
• Displaying a newsfeed using an RSS Feed section.
• Adding a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar.

The Widgets section is located in your WP dashboard and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This brings you to the Widgets screen into your browser window …

(Widgets Screen)

Let’s start configuring some sidebar menu widgets …

Adding Text Widgets To The Blog Sidebar

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 section or other widget sections, such as article snippets, image links, tips and more to your site … simply by typing in text or inserting HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …

(A text widget is versatile!)

Example: Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget

For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on the 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, you will need to create or source a 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.

To display an image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the image to your server and write down the URL pointing to your image location.

For example …

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

You will need this information in Step 3.

In order for visitors to be taken to the contact page when the help 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 – Create the contact page.

Create a contact page on your site and note its URL …

Step 3 – Compose the HTML 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, we just need to create the instructions linking your button image to the contact page.

Your code can be written 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 the sections of the above sample code that you need to replace with your actual contact page and image URLs …

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, refer to this tutorial:

• HTML Tags For Non-Technical WordPress Users

Go back to your Widgets panel …

(Widgets Area)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the support button to display.

In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

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

(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the text widget.

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 title to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the text area, then click Save when done …

Note: Make sure to test your contact page and image 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 with no formatting tags like paragraph breaks, 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 content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box not checked)

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

(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the browser.

After adding the text widget and content, go to your site and refresh your web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your clickable support button will display in your site’s sidebar menu …

(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)

The screenshot above shows the support button in the sidebar navigation area of a newly-installed WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your widget.

The last step is to ensure that your links work. Test the button to make sure that visitors will go to your support page when they click on the button. You should be taken to the contact page …

(Test your text widget)

Useful Tips:

If you want a new browser window to open up when visitors go to the support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:

To this (i.e. add the section containing target=”_blank” in your text widget code):

When choosing images for your sidebar navigation menu, 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 mentioned earlier, some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the button image, 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 sidebar area.

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

Additional Tips:

• If you don’t want to center your button image in your 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).
• Link your support button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside the widget.

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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial series on using Widgets.

Click on this link to read Part Three:

• Configuring Widgets On The Sidebar – Part Three

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