In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will begin configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, add a search box, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
How To Add Sidebar Widgets In WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:
- Adding a Contact Us graphic linking to the contact page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar area.
- Display newsfeeds using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud section.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets area is located inside the WP admin area and can be easily accessed from the WP admin menu by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s get started …
Add A Text Widget
Text widgets are quite useful …
(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 lets you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar area or other widget sections, such as single lines or paragraphs of text, videos, messages and more to your site … just type in text or paste HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is very useful!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a help button on the sidebar that will take 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 visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the image to a folder on your server and note down the address of 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 go to the contact page when the graphic 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 then link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add the support page.
Create a contact page and note its 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. Basically, you just need to create the instructions linking your graphic image to the contact page.
Your code can be typed in a simple text file 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 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 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 to your Widgets area …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your 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 the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check your contact page and button image links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your 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 an HTML paragraph code (note: this is not necessary if you’re pasting in code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
After adding the text widget and HTML code, go to the front end of your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows a clickable button in the sidebar navigation section of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The last step is to make sure that the clickable button works. Test this by clicking on the support button. If you are taken directly to the contact page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your clickable button to ensure you’ve set up everything correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors click on the support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. include the section that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When adding images to your sidebar menu, make sure that the width of your image doesn’t 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 different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your button image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button inside the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- Link your contact button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links in your widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this series of tutorials about using WordPress widgets.
To continue, click this link:
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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