In Part One of this tutorial, we explained the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to begin configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
How To Configure Widgets
By default, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration required, such as widgets for displaying external links, recent posts, RSS feed content, filter content by tags, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets)
Setting Up Widgets On Your Blog Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this tutorial series, you will add, configure and reorder various widgets to display in your site’s sidebar navigation area, including:
- Add a clickable Contact Us graphic linking visitors to the help page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s Pages.
- Display Links on your sidebar menu.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding tags to your sidebar with a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located inside the WP administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets screen into your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
Let’s begin to configure some sidebar menu widgets …
Add A Text Widget
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)
A text widget can be used to add email and contact information, image links, scripts and more to your site … just by typing in text or inserting HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section
For this example, let’s set up a contact button on your sidebar that will take your 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 you can use on your own site …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar navigation area like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display an image on your site, first you must upload the button image to your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be used in Step 3.
For visitors to be taken to the contact page when they click on the graphic button, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link the button image to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add a contact page.
Create a contact page and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Compose the HTML code for your text widget.
Don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. In simple terms, we just need to create the instructions linking the graphic image to the destination URL.
Your code can be composed in a plain text file 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 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 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, refer to this tutorial:
Now, go back into your Widgets area …
(Widgets Panel)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want your clickable button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your 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 the widget.
Click on the widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the URLs to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …
Add a heading to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the large text box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to check all links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button will not 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 type in 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 box not checked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding your text widget and formatted content, visit the front-end of your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your clickable support button will display in the sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The final step is to make sure that your links work. Test your button to make sure that visitors will go to your support page when clicking the graphic image. If you are taken to your support page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the text widget)
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 text widget code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part containing target=”_blank” in your text widget code):
When choosing images for your sidebar navigation area, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of your 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 are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar is narrower than the width of the button image, then you may have to either adjust the graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make the images display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure the width of the image does not exceed the sidebar column width)
More Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the image inside the 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 the help button to any destination you want (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the content in your text widget.
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This is the end of part 2 of this series of tutorials.
To view Part 3, 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)