In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you will configure several widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, add search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of active widgets)
How To Configure Widgets On Your Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial series, you are going to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Contact Us image linking to your support page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar navigation area.
- Display newsfeeds with an RSS Feed section.
- Adding tag links through a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar navigation menu.
The Widgets panel is located inside the WordPress admin area and can easily be accessed from the dashboard menu by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s begin by configuring a WordPress text widget …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Blog Sidebar
Text widgets are versatile …
(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)
Text widgets can be used to add single lines or paragraphs of text, videos, forms and more to your site … just type in text or paste HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …
(Text widgets are really versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To The Sidebar Navigation Area Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable contact button on your sidebar navigation section that takes 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 you will want visitors to click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the button image to your server and write down the path to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
For someone to be taken to your contact page when the support button gets clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create your contact page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Create 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. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your code can be composed in a simple text editor 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 image below shows the sections of the above code that you will need to replace with your actual contact details …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Next, go back into your Widgets area …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget settings. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a heading to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to test all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your clickable button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text with no formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: not required if you paste in HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not checked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
Once you have added the text widget and code content, go to the front-end of your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button will display in your sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support contact button in the sidebar navigation menu of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to ensure that the clickable button works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the help page when they click on the graphic image. You should be taken directly to your support page …
(Test the text widget to ensure it works)
Tips:
If you want a new browser window to open up when visitors click on your help button (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part that says: target=”_blank” in the html code):
When choosing images for your sidebar menu, 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 can display different column widths 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 have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your theme.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the 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 align to the left.
- Link your support button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code in your text widget.
***
This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial.
Click here to access the rest of this tutorial:
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum