In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In this tutorial you are going to configure other frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
Add A Categories Section To The Blog Sidebar
Now that you have set up a text widget containing a clickable support button, let’s configure a widget to display Categories on your sidebar area.
By default, the Categories widget already displays on your sidebar area. Place the widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it on the sidebar widget area …
(Post Categories widget)
Before adding a Categories widget to your sidebar, we first recommend configuring your post categories inside your WordPress dashboard …
(WordPress Post Categories Panel)
Note: Setting up categories in WordPress will be covered in other tutorials.
Configure your Categories widget settings as described below:
- In Title: type something that your visitors will understand, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
- Check Display as dropdown if you have too many categories (this significantly reduces the length of your content by displaying all categories in a drop-down menu). Leave the box unchecked if you want a list of all categories to display on the sidebar area. (2)
- You can leave the default settings for the remaining options, or see the additional notes on configuring the Categories widget below.
- Click Save to update your settings …
(Configuring a Categories widget)
Load the site in your browser or refresh the page to see how the sidebar categories will look to visitors …
(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 section as is.
- To display the number of posts published in each category on your site, enable the Show post counts check box …
(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)
Add A Recent Posts Section
The Recent Posts widget typically appears in the sidebar section by default. All you need to do is configure your widget.
Click on its widget title bar to configure its settings …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget)
There’s very little to configure. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and 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 widget settings)
The number of posts you’ve specified will be listed on your sidebar section …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget on sidebar)
For a step-by-step tutorial about how to create and edit a WordPress Post, go here: How To Create A New WP Post
Adding Links To Your Site’s Pages
Next, let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation area showing links to the pages you select.
Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …
(Pages Widget)
Drag the Pages widget to your widget area …
(Dragging and dropping a Pages widget into the sidebar)
The Pages widget allows you to configure the following options:
- Title: Add a title to the widget (e.g. “Site Information“) (1)
- Sort by: Sort how your pages display: by title (i.e. alphabetically), by page order, or by page ID. (2)
- Exclude: Prevent pages from showing on the sidebar (3) …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings)
By default, pages are displayed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using one of the other options, then select a different method from the Sort by: drop-down menu …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings – sorting options)
To exclude pages from showing in the sidebar, simply paste in the Page Ids for all the pages you would like excluded separated by commas into the Exclude field of the Pages widget …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings – excluding pages by ID)
A tutorial is provided on finding a WordPress page ID here: How To Find A Post Or Page ID In WordPress
Click the Save button when done and then click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.
Links to your blog’s main pages will now appear in the sidebar …
(Pages Widget on sidebar)
Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar. This is useful if you need to display different groups of pages on your sidebar area (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)
Add Links To Your Blog Sidebar
Next, let’s add a widget to the sidebar to display links to external resources.
Before adding a Links widget to the sidebar, we recommend setting up the Links section inside your dashboard first …
(WordPress Links section)
Note: We plan to provide separate tutorials about how to use WordPress Links.
To add the widget, select a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress 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 section …
(WordPress Links Widget Settings)
You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to your sidebar navigation section 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 WordPress 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 links will display immediately on your site …
(Links added to sidebar navigation section)
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 link lists to your sidebar navigation menu.
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This is the end of part 3 of this tutorial about how to use Widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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