In Part One of this tutorial, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this section you are going to configure various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
Configuring Commonly-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying external links, filter posts by categories, text or HTML banners, add site search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
How To Configure Widgets On The Sidebar Navigation Menu: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets, including:
- Adding a clickable Support image linking to your help page.
- Adding a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display useful Links on the sidebar section.
- Displaying news items with an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud section.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located in the WordPress dashboard and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s begin to configure some widgets …
Add A Text Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
Text widgets are quite 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)
Text widgets let you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar menu or other widget sections, such as lists of favorite items, maps and directions, tips and more to your site … just by typing in text or pasting HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, let’s set up a help button on your sidebar navigation section that will take 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 visitors can click on …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation section like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the graphic image to your server’s images folder and note the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
In order for visitors to go to your contact page when the graphic button is clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Create a contact page.
Create a contact page and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
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 button.
Your code can be written a simple 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 image below shows which sections of the above sample code 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 understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Now, go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you would like your clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, find a Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag the 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 your text widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to test your contact page and image links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button will not work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If adding text with no formatting tags, 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 doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not checked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding the widget and formatted content, go to your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your support button will display in your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the support button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test the widget.
The last step is to ensure that your destination link works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the help page when clicking the graphic image. If you are taken to the contact page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test the text widget to make sure it works)
Text Widgets – Useful Tips:
If you would like your contact page to display in a new browser window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part that says: target=”_blank” in your html code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation menu, make sure that the width of your image does not exceed the width of your sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. Note that some themes can display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want the image to be centered in your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the code. The image will then align to the left.
- Link the contact button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code in your widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial about how to use WordPress widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click here:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)