In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will begin configuring various WordPress widgets.
How To Configure Sidebar Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of built-in 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, newsfeeds, adding a search box, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Configuring Frequently-Used Widgets On The Blog Sidebar: Tutorial
In this tutorial, we will add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:
- Adding a Support Contact image linking visitors to your contact details page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of Pages.
- Display useful Links on your sidebar menu.
- Displaying the latest news using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located in your WP administration area and can be accessed from the WP admin menu by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets area in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s begin to configure some sidebar widgets …
Add A Text Widget
Text widgets are incredibly 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)
A text widget can be used to add notices, social media buttons, scripts and more to your site … just type in text or add HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …
(A text widget is very useful!)
Example: Add A Support Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on the sidebar 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 “help button” graphic image that you will want your your visitors to click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the graphic image to the images folder in your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
For visitors to go to the contact page when the support button gets clicked, 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 image 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. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions linking the button image to your destination URL.
Your instructions can be written a plain 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 above with the URL of your image location.
The image below shows which sections of the above code you need to replace with your actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help with basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Go back into your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want your clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the 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 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 links into the Content area, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button won’t 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’re typing in formatted 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 selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added the widget and code content, go to the front end of your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display in your sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to make sure that your destination link works. Test this by clicking the graphic button. You should be taken directly to your support page …
(Test the text widget to make sure it works)
Tips:
If you would like the support page to open inside a new window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section containing target=”_blank” in your text widget code):
When adding images to your sidebar area, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of the 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 their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements display correctly on your sidebar.
(Make sure the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want the button image to be centered in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link your help button to any destination you like (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 section 2 of this tutorial series.
Click here to continue:
***
"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group