How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3

Learn how to add and configure a number of useful widgets on your WordPress sidebar …

How To Add And Configure Widgets In Your WordPress Blog SidebarIn Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.

In this section you are going to learn how to configure other default widgets.

Adding A Post Categories Section To Your Blog Sidebar

Now that you have set up a text widget containing a clickable help button, let’s configure a widget for displaying Categories on the sidebar navigation area.

By default, the Categories widget already displays on the sidebar navigation section. Place this widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it in your sidebar area …

WordPress Categories Widget

(WordPress Categories widget)

Practical Tip

your your WordPress categories …

Post Categories Screen

(WordPress Categories)

Note: Setting up and using WordPress categories will be explained in separate tutorials.

Let’s configure your categories widget settings as shown below:

  • In Title: type something that blog readers will understand, for example, “Choose A Topic…” (1)
  • Check Display as dropdown if you plan to have many categories (this significantly reduces the size of your content by displaying all categories inside a drop-down menu). Leave the box unchecked if you want a list of all categories to display on the sidebar navigation area. (2)
  • You can leave the other options unticked, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
  • Click Save when finished …

WordPress Categories Widget settings

(WordPress Categories widget settings)

Load the site in your browser or refresh your page to see how your sidebar categories will look to site visitors …

Categories widget added to sidebar

(WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar)

Useful Tip

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

(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)

Add A Recent Posts Widget To The Blog Sidebar Menu

The Recent Posts widget is normally added to the sidebar 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

(Recent Posts widget)

There’s really not much to set up here. You can add a widget title, 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 enter the number of posts to show and click Save when done …

Recent Posts widget settings

(Recent Posts WordPress widget settings)

The most recent number of posts you’ve specified will appear on the sidebar area …

Recent Posts widget on sidebar section

(Recent Posts WordPress widget displayed on sidebar)

For a step-by-step tutorial about how to create and edit WordPress Posts, go here: How To Create A New Post In WordPress

Displaying Your Site’s Main Pages

Next, we’ll add a widget to your sidebar to display page links.

Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …

WordPress Pages Widget

(WordPress Pages Widget)

Drag the Pages widget to your sidebar widget section …

Adding a Pages widget to the sidebar navigation menu

(Inserting a Pages widget into the sidebar navigation section)

The Pages widget allows you to configure the following options:

  • 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: Prevent pages from being visible on the sidebar (3) …

Pages Widget settings

(WordPress Pages Widget settings)

By default, pages will be listed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using one of the other options, then choose a different method from the Sort by: drop-down menu …

Pages Widget settings - sort options

(WordPress Pages Widget settings – item sorting options)

To prevent certain pages from displaying in the sidebar, enter the Page Ids for the pages you want to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field of the Pages widget …

Pages Widget settings - exclude pages

(WordPress Pages Widget settings – excluding pages)

To learn how to find a WordPress post or page ID, see this step-by-step tutorial: Finding The WP Post Or Page ID

Click the Save button when done and click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.

Links to the blog’s pages will now appear in your sidebar …

Pages Widget on sidebar

(Pages Widget on sidebar)

Tip

Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar. This is useful if you would like to display separate page groups on the sidebar (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)

Add A Links Widget

Next, we’ll add a widget to the sidebar to display external links (e.g. to useful resources, affiliate links, etc).

Before adding a Links widget to your sidebar navigation menu, we recommend configuring your Links section inside the WP dashboard first …

WordPress Links section

(WordPress Links section)

Note: We are currently putting together tutorials on how to configure and use the WordPress Links feature.

To add the widget, find a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …

WordPress Links Widget

(Links Widget)

Drag it to your active area …

Making Links Widget active

(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 your sidebar …

Links Widget Settings

(WordPress Links Widget Settings)

You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to the sidebar 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 Your Sidebar

(Add Multiple Links Widgets To Your 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

(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 …

Links widget: '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 to update your settings. Your links will become immediately visible on your site …

Links added to WordPress sidebar

(External links added to sidebar)

As the above example shows, you can display specific links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple link lists to your WordPress sidebar navigation area.

How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPress

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This is the end of part three of this tutorial.

To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:

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