In Part 1 of this tutorial, we cover the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you will 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 built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with minimal to no configuration required, such as widgets that let you display links to your pages, recent posts, news items, filter content by tags, etc.
(By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets)
Adding Commonly-Used WordPress Widgets To Your Sidebar Navigation Area: Tutorial
In this tutorial series, you will add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact graphic button linking visitors to your help page.
- Add a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Add a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar.
- Adding an RSS Feed section.
- Adding a list of clickable tags using a Tag Cloud section.
- Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar menu.
To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This opens the Widgets section into your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s begin by learning how to configure text widgets …
Add A Text Widget
Text widgets are incredibly useful …
(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, ads, reviews and more to your site … just by typing in text or pasting HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are extremely versatile!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To Your Sidebar Section
For this example, let’s set up a clickable support button on the sidebar navigation area 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, you will need to create or source a graphic image that you will want your visitors to 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 your server and write down the address of your server’s image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
This information will be required in Step 3.
For someone to go to the contact page when they click on the help 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 – Create the contact page.
Create a contact page and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
If you’re not a technical-minded person, don’t worry … this sounds a lot more technical than it is. Basically, we just need to create the instructions for your clickable image.
Your instructions can be written 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 above with the URL of your image location.
The screenshot below shows the sections of the above code that you need to replace with the actual contact details …
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:
Next, go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your clickable button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release it at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the 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 your text widget content area and click the save button …
Add a heading to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the text area, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to test your contact page and image links before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or the button won’t 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 paragraphs (note: this is not necessary 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 box unchecked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option not checked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option selected …
(Automatically add paragraphs box selected)
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Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
After adding your widget and code content, visit your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your clickable support button will display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the contact button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your widget.
The last step is to ensure that your destination link works. Test this by clicking on the button. You should be taken directly to your contact page …
(Test your text widget)
Useful Tips:
If you want the support page to display in a new browser window when visitors click on the help (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the button code from this:
To this (i.e. include the part that says: target=”_blank” in your text widget code):
When choosing images for your sidebar area, 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 layout. Some sidebars may be wider or narrower. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of your button image, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your sidebar area.
(Make sure the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button image 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 help button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the code in your text widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial series.
To view Part Three, click this link:
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