Tag: Widgets WP

In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.

In this section you are going to learn how to configure several WordPress sidebar widgets.

Widget Configuration

By default, your site comes with several preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets that let you display external links, recent posts, news items, adding content search features, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)

How To Set Up Sidebar Widgets: Tutorial

In this tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets, including:

• Adding a Support image linking to the support page.
• Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
• Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
• Add a list of the site’s Pages.
• Display useful Links on the sidebar.
• Adding an RSS Feed section.
• Add a Tag Cloud.
• Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar navigation section.

The Widgets area is located in the WP administration area and can be easily accessed from the dashboard menu by choosing Appearance > Widgets …

(Widgets Menu)

This loads the Widgets section into your browser …

(Widgets Panel)

Let’s configure WordPress text widgets …

Adding Text Widgets

Text widgets are incredibly useful …

(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 notices, image links, messages and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …

(Text widgets are really versatile!)

Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Help Button To The Sidebar Area

For this example, let’s set up a help button on the sidebar menu 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, create or source a 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 an image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your image to your server and note the path to your image location.

E.g. …

http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg

This information will be required in Step 3.

For someone to go to your contact page when the support button gets clicked, 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 your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Create the destination page.

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

Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.

Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.

Your code can be composed in a plain text editor and will 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 which sections of the above code you will need to replace with your actual contact details …

Replace the above URLs and then copy 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 HTML For WordPress Users

Now, go back into your Widgets area …

(Widgets Panel)

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

Add a title 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 the save button …

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

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the browser.

Once you have added the widget and formatted content, go to your site and refresh your browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the support button will display at the top of the sidebar menu …

(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)

The above screenshot shows the support contact button added to a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your button.

The last step is to make sure that the links work. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the help page when clicking the graphic image. You should be taken to your contact page …

(Test your text widget to make sure you’ve set everything up correctly)

Tips:

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

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

When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation menu, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of the 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 their layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar 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 graphics display correctly on your sidebar area.

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

Extra Tips:

• If you don’t want to center the button image inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be left-aligned.
• You can link your support button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the links in the widget.

***

This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials.

Click here to continue:

• How To Add Widgets To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar – Part 3

***