Tag: Widgets

In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.

In this section you are going to learn how to begin configuring a number of WordPress widgets.

Widget Configuration

In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets that let you display external links, filter posts by categories, news items, adding content search features, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several built-in widgets)

Adding And Configuring Widgets On The Sidebar Section: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this tutorial series, we will add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:

• Adding a clickable Help image linking visitors to your help page.
• Adding a Categories section.
• Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
• Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
• Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar.
• Adding an RSS Feed section.
• Adding clickable tags through a Tag Cloud.
• Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar menu.

To access the Widgets area log into the dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This loads the Widgets screen in your browser …

(Widgets Panel)

Let’s begin by learning how to configure text widgets …

Adding Text Widgets To The Blog Sidebar

Text widgets are incredibly useful …

(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 or other widget sections, such as article snippets, maps and directions, scripts and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …

(Text widgets are really useful!)

Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To The Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget

For this example, let’s set up a clickable support button on your sidebar that will take your 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 the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

To display an image on your site, you must first upload the button image to your server and note down the path to your server’s image location.

E.g. …

http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg

This information will be used in Step 3.

In order for visitors to be taken to your contact page when the help button is clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Create your destination page.

Create a contact page and note the page URL …

Step 3 – Compose the code for your text widget.

Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions linking your graphic image to your contact page.

Your instructions can be typed in a plain text editor 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 screenshot below shows the sections of the above sample code that you will 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 figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:

• A Beginner’s Guide To HTML For WordPress Users

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 support button should display.

In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

Drag your Text widget to your 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 Text widget title bar to configure its settings. 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 the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content area, then click Save when done …

Note: Make sure to check all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your clickable button will not 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 paragraphs (note: not required if you’re typing 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 checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.

After adding the text widget and code content, visit the front end of your site and refresh your browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the support button should display in your site’s sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)

The above screenshot shows the button added to a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test the widget.

The last step is to ensure that the destination link works. Test this by clicking the button. If you are taken to your contact page, then everything has been set up correctly …

(Test your clickable button)

Tips:

If you want the contact page to display inside a new window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:

To this (i.e. insert the section that says: target=”_blank” in the text widget code):

When adding images to your sidebar navigation section, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As we’ve previously mentioned, some themes may display elements differently depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make the images display correctly on your sidebar section.

(Adjust column width or reduce image size)

Additional Tips:

• If you don’t want to center the button image in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then be left-aligned.
• Link the help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links in the text widget.

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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial on using WordPress widgets.

Click here to keep reading:

• How To Add WordPress Widgets To Your Site – Part 3

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