In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you are going to configure various WordPress sidebar widgets.
Configuring Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, RSS feed content, add a search box, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
How To Add And Configure Frequently-Used Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Section: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial, we will add, configure and reorder various frequently-used WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a clickable Contact Us button linking visitors to your help page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of your site’s main Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags through a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar menu.
The Widgets screen is located in the WP admin area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s get started …
Add A Text Widget To The Sidebar Area
Text widgets are incredibly versatile …
(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)
A text widget lets you insert just about anything you want into your sidebar navigation area or other widget sections, such as quotes, image links, tips and more to your site … just by typing in text or pasting 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 versatile!)
Example: Add A Contact Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a contact button on the sidebar menu that will take 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 graphic image that visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the button image to a folder on your server and write down 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.
For visitors to go to the contact page when the graphic button is clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create the support page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions linking the button image to the contact page/helpdesk.
Your code can be typed in a simple text file 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 with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot below shows which sections of the above code you will need to replace with the actual contact details …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a heading to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text without 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 code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your text widget and HTML code, visit your site and refresh your browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your clickable support button will display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows a clickable button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the button.
The final step is to ensure that the links work. Test your button to make sure that visitors will go to the contact page when clicking the button. You should be taken directly to your support page …
(Test the clickable button)
Tips:
If you would like a new window to open up when visitors go to the support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. include the section containing target=”_blank” in the html code):
When choosing images for your sidebar navigation section, 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 are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want your button to be centered inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then align to the left.
- Link the help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in your widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this series of tutorials.
To keep reading, 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