In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we cover the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to begin configuring a number of WordPress widgets.
Configuring Widgets
By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add tag clouds, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
How To Configure Commonly-Used Sidebar Widgets: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you are going to add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Support button linking to your help page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display Links on your sidebar menu.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add tag links using a Tag Cloud.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar navigation menu.
The Widgets panel is located inside your WP dashboard and can be easily accessed from the dashboard menu by clicking on Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This opens the Widgets section into your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s get started …
Add A Text Widget To Your Sidebar Navigation Area
Text widgets are 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 can be used to add article snippets, social media buttons, reviews and more to your site … just by typing in text or inserting HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Help Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Area Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on the sidebar that takes 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 the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the clickable button image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button image to a folder on your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to the contact page when they click on the help button, you will need to either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add the destination page.
Create a contact page and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create the code for your text widget.
If you’re not a technical-minded person, don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable button.
Your instructions can be written a plain 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 with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot below shows the sections of the above code that you will need to replace with the actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:
Next, go back into your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, select a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your 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 your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the text area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test all links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your clickable button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text with no formatting tags like paragraph breaks, 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 HTML content like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
After adding the widget and code content, visit the front-end of your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the clickable support button will display in your sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the support button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to make sure that your destination URL works. Test this by clicking the help button. If you are taken to the support page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test your clickable button)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you would like a new window to open up when visitors click on your support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part containing target=”_blank” in your code):
When choosing images for your sidebar area, make sure that the width of the 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 can display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your button image, then you may have to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then be aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- Link your help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside the text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial series about how to use Widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click here:
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