Tag: Widgets WP

In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we cover the basics of using widgets in WordPress.

In this section you are going to begin configuring various WordPress sidebar widgets.

Configuring Sidebar Widgets

By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, text or HTML banners, filter content by tags, etc.

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

Configuring Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets On The Sidebar: Tutorial

In this tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets to display in your site’s sidebar, including:

• Adding a clickable Contact Us graphic button linking visitors 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 a list of useful Links on the sidebar.
• Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
• Add a Tag Cloud section.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar.

The Widgets screen is located inside the WP dashboard and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …

(Widgets Area)

Let’s start to configure some widgets …

Text Widgets

Text widgets are incredibly 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 let you insert just about anything you want into your sidebar or other widget sections, such as events, image links, tips and more to your site … simply 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 when done …

(Text widgets are really useful!)

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

For this example, we’ll set up a help button on the sidebar 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that visitors can click on …

We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar area like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

Upload the image to a folder on your server and note the URL pointing to your server’s image location.

For example …

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

You will need this information in Step 3.

In order for someone to be taken to your contact page when the support button is clicked, you must 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 – Add a support page.

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

Step 3 – Compose 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 graphic image to the contact page.

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

Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.

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

• Using Formatting Content With HTML In WordPress

Now, go back into your Widgets area …

(Widgets Screen)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like the button to display.

In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …

(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the text widget.

Click on the widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the URLs 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?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …

Note: Remember to check all 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 paste in formatted HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).

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

(Automatically add paragraphs box not checked)

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

(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)

***

Step 6 – Refresh your browser.

After adding your widget and code content, go to the front end of your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display at the top of the site’s sidebar menu …

(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)

The above screenshot shows the support button added to 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 your visitors will go to your contact page when clicking the graphic image. You should be taken directly to the support page …

(Test the text widget to make sure it works)

Text Widgets – Useful Tips:

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

To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in your html code):

When choosing images for your sidebar menu, 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. As mentioned earlier, some themes may display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the button image, then you may have to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your theme.

(Adjust column width or reduce image size)

More Tips:

• If you don’t want to center the image 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).
• Link the contact button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside your text widget.

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This is the end of section 2 of this series of tutorials about using WordPress widgets.

To continue, click here:

• Adding Widgets To The WordPress Sidebar Section – Part Three

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