In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to begin configuring various WordPress widgets.
How To Configure Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, filter posts by categories, newsfeeds, add a search box, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)
How To Add Commonly-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets To WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact image linking to the contact page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Adding a list of the site’s most important Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on the sidebar.
- Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags with a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets section is located in the WP admin area and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s start configuring your widgets …
Add A Text Widget To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
Text widgets are incredibly useful …
(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)
A text widget can be used to add quotes, ads, messages and more to your site … just by typing in text or adding HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings when done …
(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on your sidebar 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, 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 your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display an image on your site, first you must upload the image to a folder on your server and note down the address of your server’s image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
In order for someone to be taken to your contact page when the support button gets 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 link your button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add a contact page.
Create a contact page and note its URL …
Step 3 – Compose 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, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your code can be typed in a simple text editor and should 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 above with the URL of your image location.
The image below shows the sections of the above sample code that you need to replace with the 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 understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your text widget settings.
Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget settings. Paste the code with the URLs 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 destination URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If 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 type 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 option not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.
Once you have added the text widget and code content, go to the front end of your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button should display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the contact button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The last step is to ensure that the links work. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to your help page when clicking the graphic image. You should be taken directly to your support page …
(Test the text widget)
Tips:
If you would like the contact 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 text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. add the section that says: target=”_blank” in the code):
When inserting images into your sidebar navigation area, 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 may display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of your button images, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your theme.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want the image to be centered inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the line of code. The image will then be left-aligned.
- You can link the contact button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code inside the widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this tutorial series.
To keep reading, click here:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now