In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In this section you will learn how to configure other widgets.
How To Add Post Categories
Now that you have set up a text widget containing a help button, let’s configure Categories.
The Categories widget displays on your sidebar by default. Place the widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it on the sidebar widget area …
(Categories widget)
Before adding a Categories widget to your sidebar navigation area, we recommend setting up your categories first …
(Post Categories Screen)
Note: We plan to provide separate tutorials on using WordPress categories.
Let’s configure the Categories widget settings as described below:
- In Title: type something that will make sense to your visitors, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
- Check Display as dropdown if you plan to have many categories (this significantly reduces the size of your widget content by displaying all categories inside a drop-down menu). Leave the box unchecked if you want a list of all categories to display on the sidebar navigation menu. (2)
- Leave the remaining options as the default, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
- Click Save to update your settings …
(Configuring a WordPress Categories widget)
Click Visit Site or reload your page to see how the content will display to your visitors …
(WordPress Categories widget added to sidebar)
Tips:
- Change the default Uncategorized post category to something more meaningful.
- If you use nested categories on your site, you may want to check the Show hierarchy option, otherwise leave this box unticked.
- To display the number of posts published in each category on your site, tick the Show post counts check box …
(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)
Add Recent Posts To Your Sidebar
The Recent Posts widget is normally added to your sidebar area by default. All you need to do is configure this widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings …
(Recent Posts widget)
There is really very little to set up here. You can add a widget title, select the number of posts to display and display post dates. If you’re happy to use the default Number of posts to show setting, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise change the number of posts and click Save when done …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget settings)
The most recent number of posts you’ve specified will display on the sidebar …
(Recent Posts widget on blog sidebar)
To learn how to create WordPress Posts, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A Post In WordPress
Adding Links To Your Site’s Main Pages In The Blog Sidebar
Next, let’s add a widget to your sidebar section to display your pages.
Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress Pages Widget)
Drag the Pages widget to your sidebar widget section …
(Dragging and dropping a Pages widget into the sidebar navigation menu)
The Pages widget allows you to configure the following settings:
- Title: Add a title to the widget (e.g. “Site Information“) (1)
- Sort by: Sort how your pages display: by title (i.e. alphabetically), by page order, or by page ID. (2)
- Exclude: Use this setting to hide pages on the sidebar navigation area (3) …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings)
By default, pages will be listed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using one of the other options, then select a different method in the Sort by: drop-down menu …
(WordPress Pages Widget settings – sorting options)
To prevent pages from showing in the sidebar, type in the Page Ids for all the pages you would like to exclude separated by commas into the Exclude field of the widget …
(Pages Widget settings – excluding pages)
A step-by-step tutorial is provided on finding a page ID in WordPress here: How To Find Page And Post IDs In WordPress
Click the Save button when done and then click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.
Links to the blog’s pages will now display on the sidebar …
(Pages Widget on sidebar)
Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to your sidebar navigation menu. This is handy if you would like to display separate page groups on the sidebar navigation area (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)
Add A Links Widget To Your WordPress Sidebar
Next, we’ll add a Links widget that will display external links on your WordPress sidebar.
Before adding a Links widget to the sidebar, we recommend configuring your Links feature inside your dashboard first …
(WordPress Links section)
Note: Setting up the Links feature in WordPress will be explained in other tutorials.
To add the widget, find a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress Links Widget)
Drag the widget to your sidebar area …
(Making Links Widget active)
The widget offers a number of configurable options, including the ability to specify what information to show about your links and how many links you want to display on the sidebar …
(WordPress Links Widget Settings)
You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to your sidebar area as you want. As you will see in a moment, this lets you create and display specific lists of links on your site …
(Add Multiple WordPress Links Widgets To Your Sidebar Navigation Menu)
You can sort links by Link title, Link rating, Link ID, or display links in Random order …
(WordPress Links widget: ‘Sort by:’ drop-down menu)
You can also create and display a list of items for a specific category, by selecting a link category from the ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu …
( Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)
When you have finished configuring your Links Widget, click the Save button. Your links will display immediately on your site …
(Links added to sidebar section)
As the above example shows, you can display specific external links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple link lists to your WordPress sidebar area.
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This is the end of section 3 of this series of tutorials on using WordPress widgets.
To keep reading, click this link:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum