In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In this tutorial you will learn how to configure other frequently-used blog widgets.
Add Post Categories To Your Blog Sidebar
Now that you know how to set up a text widget containing a clickable support button, let’s configure a widget for displaying Post Categories on the sidebar.
By default, the Categories widget already displays on your sidebar. All you need to do, therefore, is place the widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it on your sidebar widget area …
(WordPress Post Categories widget)
Before adding a Categories widget to the sidebar navigation menu, we recommend setting up your Categoriessection first …
(Categories)
Note: We plan to provide separate tutorials about how to set up WordPress post categories.
Let’s configure the Categories widget settings as shown below:
- In Title: type something that will make sense to visitors, for example, “Choose A Topic…” (1)
- If you have too many categories, check Display as dropdown (this significantly reduces the size of the content by displaying all categories inside a drop-down menu). Leave the box unticked if you want a list of all categories to display on the sidebar navigation area. (2)
- You can leave the remaining options unchecked, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
- Click Save to update your settings …
(Configuring a Categories widget)
Load the site in your browser or refresh your page to see how the content will look to blog readers …
(WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar)
Tips:
- Change the default Uncategorized post category to something more meaningful.
- If you use nested categories on your site, you may want to check the Show hierarchy box, otherwise leave this box unchecked.
- To display the number of posts published in each category, enable the Show post counts check box …
(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)
Add A Recent Posts Widget To The Sidebar
The Recent Posts widget is typically added to the sidebar by default. All you need to do is configure this widget.
Click on its title bar to configure its settings …
(Recent Posts widget)
There’s very little to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and opt to display post dates. If you want to use the default setting for Number of posts to show, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise change the number of posts and click Save …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget settings)
The number of posts you’ve specified will be listed on the sidebar area …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget added to sidebar area)
To learn how to create WordPress Posts, see this tutorial: How To Create A New WordPress Post
Display Your Site’s Pages In The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Next, let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation area for listing pages.
Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress Pages Widget)
Drag the Pages widget to your widget area …
(Adding a Pages widget to the sidebar)
The Pages widget lets you configure the following settings:
- Title: Add a title to the widget (e.g. “Pages“) (1)
- Sort by: Sort how your pages display: by title (i.e. alphabetically), by page order, or page ID. (2)
- Exclude: Use this setting to prevent pages from showing on the sidebar navigation area (3) …
(Pages Widget settings)
By default, pages are displayed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using another option, then select a different method in the Sort by: drop-down menu …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings – sort options)
To prevent pages from showing to visitors, just paste in their Page Ids separated by commas into the Exclude field of the widget …
(Pages Widget settings – exclude pages by ID)
To learn how to find a WordPress post or page ID, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Locate A Post Or Page ID In WordPress
Click the Save button when done and click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.
Links to your blog’s pages will now display on the sidebar area …
(Pages Widget on blog sidebar)
Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar navigation area. This is useful if you want to display separate groups of pages on your sidebar navigation area (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)
Add A Links Widget To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Section
Now, we’ll add a Links widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
Before adding a Links widget to the sidebar menu, you should first configure your Links feature inside your WP dashboard …
(WordPress Links screen)
Note: We are currently putting together tutorials on setting up the Links feature.
To add the widget, find a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …
(Links Widget)
Drag the widget to your sidebar area …
(Making Links Widget active)
The widget offers a number of configurable options, including the ability to specify what information to show about your links and how many links you want to display on the sidebar …
(Links Widget Settings)
You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to your sidebar area as you want. As you will see in a moment, this lets you create and display specific lists of links on your site …
(Add Multiple Links Widgets To The Sidebar)
You can sort links by Link title, Link rating, Link ID, or display links in Random order …
(WordPress Links widget: ‘Sort by:’ drop-down menu)
You can also create and display a list of items for a specific category, by selecting a link category from the ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu …
( WordPress Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)
When you have finished configuring your Links Widget, click the Save button. Your widget will become immediately visible on your site …
(External links added to sidebar)
As the above example shows, you can display specific external links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple lists of links to the WordPress sidebar menu.
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This is the end of part three of this series of tutorials about using Widgets.
Click on this link to read Part 4:
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