In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.
In this section you will begin configuring several WordPress sidebar widgets.
Configuring Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled active widgets, such as widgets that let you display external links, recent posts, news items, add a search box, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several active widgets)
How To Configure Commonly-Used Sidebar Widgets: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, we will add, configure and reorder various commonly-used WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a clickable Support Contact image linking visitors to your contact page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
- Display important Links on the sidebar.
- Displaying news items with an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud.
- Add and configure an Archives section to the sidebar area.
The Widgets section is located inside the WP admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s begin by configuring WordPress text 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)
Text widgets let you insert just about anything you want into the sidebar or other widget sections, such as instructions, image links, reviews and more to your site … just type in text or paste HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(A text widget is really useful!)
Example: Add A Clickable Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Menu Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on your sidebar section 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, create or source a “help button” 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 menu like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the image on your site, you must first upload the graphic image to your server’s images folder and note down the address of your 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 the support button gets clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add a support page.
Create a contact page on your site 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, you just need to create the instructions linking the button image to your destination URL.
Your code can be composed in a plain text file 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 screenshot below shows which sections of the above sample code you will need to replace with your actual contact details …
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:
Next, go back to your Widgets section …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want your support button to display.
In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …
(WordPress text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your text 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 your text widget content area and click save …
Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the text area, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to test your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the clickable button won’t work.
*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***
If you’re adding text without formatting tags, you may want to tick the Automatically add paragraphs box to wrap each block of text in an HTML paragraph code (note: this is not necessary if you’re pasting in formatted 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 checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not ticked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option checked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.
After adding your widget and code content, visit your site and refresh your web browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then the support button should display at the top of the sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows a clickable button added to a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to ensure that your destination link works. Test your button to make sure that your visitors will go to the help page when clicking the graphic image. If you are taken directly to your contact page, then everything has been set up correctly …
(Test the clickable button)
Useful Tips:
If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors click on the support button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in the code):
When choosing images to add to your sidebar navigation menu, 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 can display elements differently depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the button image, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the column width to make the images display correctly on your sidebar.
(Adjust column width or reduce image size)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center the button 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.
- Link the help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the content in your text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial.
To view Part Three, click here:
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