In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you are going to configure several WordPress sidebar widgets.
How To Configure Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display external links, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, filter content by publish dates, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets)
Setting Up Widgets On Your Blog Sidebar Navigation Menu: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets to display in your site’s sidebar navigation section, including:
- Add a clickable Help graphic button linking visitors to your contact details page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Adding a list of your site’s most important Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar menu.
To access the Widgets area log into your dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s start configuring some widgets …
Add A Text Widget To Your Blog 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 comments, videos, news and updates and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …
(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Contact Button To Your Sidebar Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on the sidebar area 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the button image to your server’s images folder and write down the address of your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required 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 then link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create your destination page.
Create a contact page on your site and note its URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
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 the contact page.
Your code can be typed in a plain text editor 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 the sections of the above sample code that you will need to replace with the actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Now, go back into your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the support button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(WordPress 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 Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your text widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click save …
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 Content area, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to test your contact page and image URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the clickable 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 an HTML paragraph code (note: not required if you’re pasting in formatted HTML code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your text widget and code, visit your site and refresh the web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button should display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the contact button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to make sure that your destination link works. Test this by clicking the help button. You should be taken to the support page …
(Test your text widget)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you want your contact page to display inside a new browser window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in your text widget code):
When choosing images for your sidebar section, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As mentioned earlier, some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of your graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your image inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- Link your help button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in the text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial on how to use Widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)