In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to begin configuring various WordPress widgets.
How To Configure Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display external links, recent posts, RSS feed content, add tag clouds, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
Configuring Widgets On Your Sidebar: Tutorial
In this tutorial series, you are going to add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used widgets to display in your site’s sidebar navigation menu, including:
- Add a Help image linking visitors to your support page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of Pages.
- Display Links on your sidebar.
- Display news items with an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located in the WP admin area and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s begin configuring your widgets …
Adding Text Widgets To Your Sidebar Navigation Section
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, image links, news and updates and more to your site … just by typing in text or adding HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Help Button To Your Sidebar Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a clickable help button on your sidebar 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that your visitors can click on …
We’ll set up a clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the image on your site, first you must upload the graphic image to the images folder in your server and note the address of 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 be taken to your contact page when the graphic button gets 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 image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create a support page.
Create a contact page on your site 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. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your code can be composed 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 above 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 with basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets panel …
(Widgets Panel)
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, select a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the text area, then click the save button …
Note: Make sure to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the 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 formatted 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 unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
After adding your text widget and 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 should display at the top of your sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on sidebar)
The above screenshot shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to make sure that the clickable button works. Test this by clicking the help button. You should be taken directly to the contact page …
(Test the text widget to ensure you’ve set up everything correctly)
Tips:
If you would like the support page to open in a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in the html code):
When adding images to your sidebar navigation section, 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. Note that some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. 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 width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want the button to be centered in the sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then align to the left.
- You can link the help button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code in your widget.
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This is the end of part two of this series of tutorials on using Widgets.
To view Part 3, click here:
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