In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you are going to learn how to begin configuring a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display external links, recent posts, newsfeeds, filter content by tags, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
How To Add Widgets To The Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Help button linking visitors to your contact details page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on the sidebar.
- Display a newsfeed using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding tags to your sidebar navigation menu with a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar section.
The Widgets section is located in the WordPress admin area and can be easily accessed from the dashboard menu by selecting Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets area in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s start to configure your widgets …
Add A Text Widget To Your Blog Sidebar Area
Text widgets are quite 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 the sidebar or other widget sections, such as comments, maps and directions, messages and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are really versatile!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, let’s set up a support button on your sidebar 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that you will use on your own site …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the graphic image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button graphic to your server and write down the address of your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
For visitors to go to your contact page when they click on the graphic button, 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 your support page.
Create a contact page and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
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 the button image to your contact page/helpdesk.
Your instructions can be typed in a plain text file 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 which sections of the above sample code 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:
Now, go back to your Widgets area …
(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 the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the URLs 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 Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text without 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 paste in formatted 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 added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added your text widget and code, go to your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button will display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support contact button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to make sure that your clickable button works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the support page when clicking the button. If you are taken to your contact page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test your clickable button)
Useful Tips:
If you want a new window to open up when visitors click on your help button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in the html code):
When choosing images for your sidebar navigation 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. Note that some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the button image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button image inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then align to the left.
- You can link the contact button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links inside the widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this series of tutorials about using WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to read Part 3:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum