In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you will begin configuring several sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration needed, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, adding tag clouds, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)
Setting Up Sidebar Widgets: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, we will add, configure and reorder various commonly-used WordPress widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:
- Add a Help button linking visitors to the contact details page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags with a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar section.
To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This opens the Widgets section in your browser window …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s get started …
Adding Text Widgets
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)
Text widgets can be used to add lists of favorite items, videos, special promotions and more to your site … just by typing in text or adding HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)
Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on your sidebar 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, create or source a “help button” graphic image that 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, first you must upload the image to your server and note down the path to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
In order for someone to be taken to your 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 your button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create your contact page.
Create a contact page and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Create the HTML code for your text widget.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions linking the graphic image to the contact page.
Your code can be typed in a simple text editor and will 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 image below shows the sections of the above code that you will 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:
Go back to your Widgets area …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the clickable button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the 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 widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …
Add a title to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the large text box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text without formatting tags like paragraph breaks, 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 formatted content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added your text widget and content, go to the front end of your site and refresh your web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The last step is to ensure that the destination link works. Test the button to make sure that visitors will go to the help page when clicking the graphic image. If you are taken directly to your support page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the text widget)
Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors go to the contact page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation menu, make sure that the width of your image does not exceed the width of your 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 their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the graphic images, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make elements display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button in 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).
- Link your help button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in the text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial about how to use WordPress widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:
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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