In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this section we are going to show you how to configure various WordPress widgets.
Sidebar Widget Configuration
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, add content search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several active widgets)
Adding Frequently-Used WordPress Widgets To The Blog Sidebar Area: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets to display in the site’s sidebar area, including:
- Adding a Support image linking visitors to your support page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of your site’s main Pages.
- Display Links on the sidebar section.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar area.
The Widgets panel can be easily accessed inside the administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This loads the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s begin configuring some sidebar menu widgets …
Add A Text Widget To The Blog Sidebar
Text widgets are quite useful …
(WordPress 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 the sidebar or other widget sections, such as lists of favorite items, image links, special promotions and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …
(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Help Button To Your Sidebar Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable contact button on your 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the button image to a folder on your server and note down the path to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
For visitors to go to your contact page when the support button is clicked, you must either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create a destination page.
Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose 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. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable button.
Your instructions can be composed in a simple text file and will look something like this …
- Replace “http://www.yourdomain.com/contact-us” in the code 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 image below shows which sections of the above sample code you need to replace with your actual web addresses …
Replace the above URLs and then copy all of your text file content to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Go back into your Widgets section …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the support button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the large text box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check your contact page and image links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the 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 paragraphs (note: not required if you paste in HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not selected)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
Once you have added the text widget and code, visit your site and refresh the browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display in your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows ’click for help’ button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to ensure that your clickable button works. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to the contact page when clicking the button. If you are taken to your support page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the clickable button)
Tips:
If you would like your support page to display in a new browser window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images for your sidebar navigation area, 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. As we’ve previously explained, some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the graphic images, then you may have to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar.
(Make sure the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want your image to be centered in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link the help button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code inside your text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this series of tutorials.
Click on this link to keep reading:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group