Tag: Widgets

In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.

In this section you are going to configure several WordPress widgets.

How To Configure Widgets

By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets, such as widgets for displaying links to your site’s pages, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add a search box, etc.

(By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)

How To Configure Widgets On Your Blog Sidebar Section: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this tutorial, you will add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used widgets, including:

• Add a Support button linking visitors to your contact details page.
• Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
• Adding a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
• Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
• Display Links on your sidebar area.
• Add an RSS Feed section.
• Adding a Tag Cloud.
• Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar navigation area.

The Widgets area is located in the WP admin area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(Widgets Menu)

This loads the Widgets section in your web browser …

(Widgets Panel)

Let’s get started …

Adding Text Widgets To The Blog Sidebar

Text widgets are versatile …

(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)

Text widgets let you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar or other widget sections, such as quotes, images, scripts and more to your site … just by typing in text or adding HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …

(A text widget is really versatile!)

Example: Add A Help Button To Your Sidebar Section Using A Text Widget

For this example, let’s set up a help button on the sidebar section 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 graphic image that your visitors can click on …

We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

To display an image on your site, you must first upload the graphic image to your server’s images folder and note the address of your server’s image location.

E.g. …

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

This information will be required in Step 3.

In order for visitors to go to the contact page when the help button is clicked, you will need to 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 a contact page.

Create a contact page on your site and note down its URL …

Step 3 – Compose the HTML 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, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.

Your instructions can be composed in a simple 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 sample code that you will need to replace with the actual contact details …

Replace the above URLs and then copy all of the above code to your clipboard when finished.

If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:

• A Useful Guide To HTML Tags For WordPress Newbies

Next, go back into your Widgets section …

(Widgets Panel)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like your support button to display.

In the Available Widgets area, select 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 …

(Dragging and dropping your Text widget)

Step 5 – Configure your text widget.

Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click the save button …

Add a title section to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, 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 button won’t work.

*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***

If you’re adding text without 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: not required if you’re pasting in code like we’re using in the example for this tutorial).

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option not checked)

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)

***

Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.

Once you have added your widget and code content, go to your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button should display at the top of the sidebar menu …

(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)

The above screenshot shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar area of a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your button.

The final step is to ensure that your clickable button works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the help page when they click on the button. You should be taken directly to your support page …

(Test your clickable button)

Useful Tips:

If you want a new window to open up when visitors go to the support page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the button code from this:

To this (i.e. insert the part containing target=”_blank” in the code):

When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation section, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of the 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 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 have to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar.

(Adjust column width or reduce image size)

Extra Tips:

• If you don’t want the button 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 aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
• Link your support button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links in your widget.

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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial.

Click here to view Part Three:

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

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