In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you will learn how to configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Commonly-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of built-in active widgets, such as widgets for displaying external links, filter posts by categories, news items, filter content by tags, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
Adding Widgets To The WordPress Sidebar Area: 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 WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Contact Us graphic linking to the help page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Adding a list of the site’s Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar.
- Display a newsfeed with an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar.
The Widgets section can be accessed inside the administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets panel into your browser window …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s begin by learning how to configure a text widget …
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 or other widget sections, such as lists of favorite items, ads, news and updates and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …
(A text widget is really useful!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, let’s set up a help button on your sidebar 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 “help button” graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the button image to a folder on your server and note the address of your server’s image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to the contact page when they click on the graphic button, you must 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 – Add your support page.
Create a contact page and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions linking your graphic image to your destination URL.
Your instructions 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 code that 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 with basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Next, go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Panel)
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, find a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click save …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the text area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to check all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your 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 paragraphs (note: this is not necessary if you’re pasting in formatted HTML code 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 option unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
Once you have added your text widget and code content, visit the front end of your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display at the top of the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the support button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to make sure that your clickable button works. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to your support page when clicking the graphic image. If you are taken directly to the support page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your text widget to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you would like your support page to display in a new browser window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section containing target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When choosing images for your sidebar area, 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. As we’ve previously mentioned, some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar 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 images display correctly on your sidebar.
(Make sure the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want the image to be centered in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link your support button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code inside your text widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial series about how to use Widgets.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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