In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this section you are going to configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, filter content by publish dates, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)
How To Set Up Commonly-Used Widgets On Your Sidebar Navigation Area: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will add, configure and reorder various widgets, including:
- Add a clickable Support graphic button linking visitors to the help page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of Pages.
- Display Links on your sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on your sidebar navigation section.
The Widgets area is located inside the WordPress administration area and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s start by configuring text widgets …
Add A Text Widget To Your Sidebar
Text widgets are incredibly 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 or other widget sections, such as notices, maps and directions, scripts and more to your site … simply by typing in text or adding HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really useful!)
Example: Add A Clickable Help Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable help button on your sidebar section 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that you will want your visitors to click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar navigation section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable button image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button graphic to a folder on your server and note the address of your 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 they click on the graphic button, you will need to 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 support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Create 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, you just need to create the instructions linking your graphic image to your 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 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 the sections of the above code that you will need to replace with the actual contact details …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Next, go back to your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your clickable button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget settings.
Click on the 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 your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the text area, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test your contact page and image links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text without formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in paragraphs (note: this is not necessary if you type 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 option unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
Once you have added your widget and code content, go to the front end of your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your clickable support button should display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The last step is to ensure that your links work. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the contact page when they click on the graphic image. You should be taken to your contact page …
(Test the text widget to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you want the support page to open inside a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. include the part containing target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When adding images to your sidebar navigation area, make sure that the width of your image doesn’t exceed the width of the 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 their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the button images, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make images display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want your 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 be left-aligned.
- Link your contact button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside the text widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial series.
Click on this link to continue:
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)