Tag: Widgets WP

In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.

In this tutorial you are going to learn how to begin configuring a number of widgets in WordPress.

How To Configure Widgets

By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, adding content search features, etc.

(By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets)

Configuring Frequently-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets: Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of widgets to display in the site’s sidebar menu, including:

• Add a Support Contact graphic linking to your help page.
• Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
• Adding a Recent Posts section.
• Add a list of the site’s most important Pages.
• Display Links on the sidebar navigation menu.
• Display a newsfeed with an RSS Feed section.
• Add clickable tags through a Tag Cloud.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar navigation section.

To access the Widgets section log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This opens the Widgets area into your web browser …

(Widgets Area)

Let’s begin to configure your widgets …

Add A Text Widget

Text widgets are 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 let you insert just about anything you want into your sidebar or other widget sections, such as email and contact information, image links, forms 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 when done …

(A text widget is very useful!)

Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Area

For this example, let’s set up a contact button on the sidebar menu 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 button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

Upload the button image to your server’s images folder and note the path to 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 help button, you will need to either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Create a contact page.

Create a contact page on your site and note its URL …

Step 3 – Compose the 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, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable button.

Your code can be typed into 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 screenshot below shows which sections of the above code you need to replace with the actual web addresses …

Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.

If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:

• A Beginner’s Guide To Using HTML In WordPress

Now, go back into your Widgets section …

(Widgets Screen)

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, select the Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it 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 the widget options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click save …

Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content area, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to test all links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your 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 paragraphs (note: not required if you paste in code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box not checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.

After adding your text widget and content, visit the front end of your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button will display in the site’s sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)

The screenshot above shows the button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your button.

The final step is to ensure that the destination URL works. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to your support page when they click on the button. If you are taken to your support page, then everything has been set up correctly …

(Test your text widget)

Useful Tips:

If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors click on your support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:

To this (i.e. include the part that says: target=”_blank” in your text widget code):

When adding images to your sidebar area, 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. Note that some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the graphic images, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make images display correctly on your sidebar section.

(Make sure the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)

More Tips:

• If you don’t want your button image to be centered 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).
• You can link your help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code in the text widget.

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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial series.

To continue, click here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Sidebar – Part Three

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