In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to configure other widgets.
Adding A Categories Section To Your Blog Sidebar
Now that you have set up a text widget containing a contact button, let’s configure a widget for displaying Post Categories on your sidebar menu.
The Categories widget displays on the sidebar by default. Place this widget wherever you want your categories to display by clicking and dragging it on the sidebar widget area …
(WordPress Categories widget)
your post categories …
(Categories)
Note: We are currently putting together tutorials on configuring and using WordPress post categories.
Let’s configure your categories widget settings as shown below:
- In Title: type something that will make sense to visitors, like “Choose A Topic…” (1)
- Check Display as dropdown if you have too many categories (this significantly reduces the size of the 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. (2)
- You can leave the default settings for the remaining options, or see the additional notes on configuring this widget below.
- Click Save to update your settings …
(Configuring a WordPress Categories widget)
Load the site in your browser or refresh the page to see how the sidebar categories will look to your site visitors …
(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 box, otherwise leave this box unchecked.
- To display the number of posts published in each category on your site, enable the Show post counts check box …
(Category widget options – Post Count Enabled vs Post Count Disabled)
Add Recent Posts To The Sidebar Section
The Recent Posts widget is added to your sidebar by default. All you need to do is configure your widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its settings …
(Recent Posts widget)
There’s not much to set up here. You can add a title if you want, select the number of posts to display and display post dates. If you want to use the default setting for Number of posts to show, then just leave the widget as is, otherwise change the number of posts and click Save …
(Recent Posts widget settings)
The number of posts you have specified will appear on your sidebar navigation menu …
(Recent Posts WordPress widget added to sidebar)
To learn how to create and edit a WordPress Post, see this step-by-step tutorial: How To Create A WordPress Post
Displaying Your Site’s Pages
Next, we’ll add a widget to your sidebar to display page links.
Find a Pages widget in the Available Widgets section …
(Pages Widget)
Drag the Pages widget to your widget section …
(Dragging and dropping a Pages widget into the sidebar)
The Pages widget lets you configure the following options:
- Title: Add a title to display above your links (e.g. “Useful Information“) (1)
- Sort by: Sort how your pages display: by title (i.e. alphabetically), by page order, or by page ID. (2)
- Exclude: Hide pages on your sidebar section (3) …
(Pages Widget settings)
By default, pages will be listed by title in alphabetical order. If you want to display pages using another option, then select a different method in the Sort by: drop-down menu …
(Pages Widget settings – sort options)
To exclude certain pages from showing in the widget, enter their Page Ids separated by commas into the Exclude field of the Pages widget …
(Pages Widget settings – excluding pages by ID)
To learn how to find a WordPress post or page ID, see this step-by-step tutorial: Finding A WP Page Or Post ID
Click the Save button when finished and then click Close at the bottom of the widget box to minimize the widget.
Links to the pages will now display in your sidebar …
(WordPress Pages Widget on blog sidebar)
Tip: You can add multiple Pages widgets to the sidebar. This is useful if you would like to display separate page groups on the sidebar menu (e.g. “Products”, “Legal Pages” etc.)
Add Links To Your WordPress Sidebar Area
Now, we’ll add a Links widget to your sidebar area.
Before adding a Links widget to the sidebar, we recommend configuring the Links section first …
(WordPress Links section)
Note: Using WordPress Links will be covered in other tutorials.
To add the widget, find a Links widget in the Available Widgets section …
(WordPress Links Widget)
Drag the widget to your active 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 your sidebar …
(WordPress Links Widget Settings)
You can add as many separate ‘Link Widgets’ to your sidebar navigation menu 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 Links Widgets To Your Sidebar)
You can sort links by Link title, Link rating, Link ID, or display links in Random order …
(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 …
( WordPress Links widget: ‘Select Link Category’ drop-down menu)
When you have finished configuring your Links Widget, click the Save button to update your settings. Your links will become immediately visible on your site …
(External links added to WordPress sidebar)
As the above example shows, you can display specific links to your site visitors (e.g. a list for a specific link category only), and add multiple lists of links to the sidebar section.
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This is the end of section 3 of this tutorial.
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