Tag: WordPress Widgets

In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.

In this section you are going to learn how to begin configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.

How To Configure Widgets

In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration needed, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, RSS feed content, adding search features, etc.

(By default, your site comes with several active widgets)

Setting Up Widgets On Your Blog Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial series, we will add, configure and reorder s number of WordPress widgets to display in your site’s sidebar navigation menu, including:

• Add a Help button linking visitors to your support page.
• Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
• Adding a Recent Posts section.
• Add a list of Pages.
• Display important Links on the sidebar.
• Add an RSS Feed section.
• Add a Tag Cloud.
• Add and configure an Archives section to your sidebar area.

The Widgets section is located in your WP administration area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …

(Widgets Section)

Let’s configure WordPress text widgets …

Adding Text Widgets

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 article snippets, images, reviews and more to your site … just type in text or add HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings …

(A text widget is versatile!)

Example: Add A Contact Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Area Using A Text Widget

For this example, let’s set up a contact button on your sidebar navigation area 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, create or source a “help button” 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.

To display the clickable image on your site, you must first upload the graphic image to your server and note down the URL pointing to your server’s image location.

For example …

http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg

This information will be used in Step 3.

In order for someone to be taken to your contact page when the graphic button gets clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will then link the button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Add a support page.

Create a contact page and note its URL …

Step 3 – Compose the HTML 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, you just need to create the instructions linking your button image to your contact page/helpdesk.

Your instructions can be typed into a simple text editor and should look something like this …

• Replace “http://www.yourdomain.com/contact-us” in the code above 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 the sections of the above code that you need to replace with the actual contact page and image URLs …

Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.

If you need help understanding basic HTML code, refer to this tutorial:

• A Basic Guide To HTML Tags For WordPress Users

Now, go back to your Widgets panel …

(Widgets Screen)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your button should display.

In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …

(Text widget)

Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release it at the top of the Widget Area …

(Drag-and-drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the text widget.

Click on the widget title bar to configure the widget 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 title to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the text area, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to check your contact page and image URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the button will not 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 paragraphs (note: not required if you’re pasting in formatted HTML code 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 checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked)

Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the web browser.

After adding your widget and HTML content, visit your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the clickable support button will display in the sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on sidebar)

The above screenshot shows ’click for help’ button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your button.

The final step is to ensure that your destination link works. Test this by clicking on the graphic button. If you are taken to the support page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …

(Test the text widget)

Tips:

If you want the support page to open in a new window when visitors click on the support (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the text widget code from this:

To this (i.e. include the section that says: target=”_blank” in your text widget code):

When inserting images into your sidebar navigation section, make sure that the width of your 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 elements differently 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 the graphic image, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the width of your sidebar column to make the images display correctly on your sidebar area.

(Adjust column width or reduce image size)

Additional Tips:

• If you don’t want to center the button in the 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 your help button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the content inside the text widget.

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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial series.

To keep reading, click this link:

• How To Add Widgets To The WordPress Sidebar – Part 3

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