In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this section you will learn how to begin configuring a number of WordPress widgets.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration needed, such as widgets for displaying external links, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, add a search box, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of active widgets)
How To Add Sidebar Widgets In WordPress: Tutorial
In this tutorial, we are going to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact graphic button linking to the contact page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display useful Links on the sidebar menu.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on your sidebar.
The Widgets screen is located in your WordPress administration area and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s configure text widgets …
Text Widgets
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)
Text widgets can be used to add policies, maps and directions, special promotions and more to your site … simply by typing in text or pasting HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really versatile!)
Example: Add A Support Button To Your Sidebar Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a support button on the sidebar navigation section 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, create or source a “help button” graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload the image to the images folder in your server and note down the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
In order for visitors to be taken to the contact page when the support button is clicked, 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 and note the page 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. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions linking your button image to your destination URL.
Your instructions can be composed in a plain text editor 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 above with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot 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 the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets screen …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your 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 to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the large text box, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to test your contact page and 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 like paragraph breaks, 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 HTML code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
Once you have added your widget and code, go to the front-end of your site and refresh the web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the clickable support button will display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The last step is to make sure that your clickable button works. Test this by clicking the button. If you are taken to the support page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test your clickable button to ensure you’ve set everything up correctly)
Text Widgets – 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 in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section that says: target=”_blank” in your text widget code):
When inserting images into your sidebar area, make sure that the width of your 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 different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the button images, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button image in your 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).
- You can link the contact button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external link, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in the widget.
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This is the end of part two of this series of tutorials.
Click here to keep reading:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now