In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to configure various WordPress sidebar widgets.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, adding site search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of active widgets)
How To Set Up Widgets On Your Sidebar Section: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various widgets, including:
- Adding a Help graphic button linking visitors to the contact page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s most important Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on the sidebar.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Add a list of clickable tags with a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar navigation area.
The Widgets screen is located inside the WordPress administration area and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This opens the Widgets screen into your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s configure WordPress text 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 navigation section or other widget sections, such as instructions, maps and directions, scripts and more to your site … simply by typing in text or inserting HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …
(Text widgets are very useful!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Help Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, let’s set up a contact button on your 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that your visitors can 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.
To display the image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your image to a folder on your server and note the path to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
In order for someone to be taken to your contact page when the help button gets clicked, 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 – Create your support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create the HTML code for your text widget.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
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 image below shows the sections of the above sample code that you need to replace with the actual contact page and image URLs …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding 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 the support 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 very top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget.
Click on the Text 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 title 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 the save button …
Note: Remember 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’re typing in HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
Once you have added the widget and content, visit the front-end of your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button should display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to make sure that your destination URL works. Test this by clicking on the support button. If you are taken directly to your support page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the text widget to ensure you’ve set up everything correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you want the 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. include the part containing target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images for your sidebar section, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of the sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that some themes may 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 button image, then you may have to either adjust the image size, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements display correctly on your theme.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want your button image to be centered in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then align to the left.
- Link the support button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside the text widget.
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This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials on using WordPress widgets.
Click here to continue:
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