In Part One of this tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use WordPress widgets.
In this tutorial you are going to configure several WordPress sidebar widgets.
How To Configure Sidebar Widgets
By default, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, newsfeeds, adding search features, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of built-in widgets)
Adding And Configuring Widgets On Your Sidebar: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, you will learn how to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:
- Add a Support Contact image linking to your support page.
- Add a Categories section.
- Add a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of your site’s most important Pages.
- Display useful Links on the sidebar.
- Display news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud.
- Configure how your Archived Posts display on your sidebar.
The Widgets screen is located inside your WordPress admin area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
Let’s begin configuring your sidebar widgets …
Adding Text Widgets
Text widgets are versatile …
(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 quotes, social media buttons, reviews and more to your site … just type in text or add HTML into the content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …
(A text widget is versatile!)
Example: Add A Clickable Help Button To The Sidebar Navigation Section Using A Text Widget
For this example, we’ll set up a clickable contact button on your sidebar 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 you will use on your own site …
We’ll set up the clickable Help button to display at the top of your sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
To display the image on your site, the button image must be uploaded to your server. Upload your button image to a folder on your server and note the path to your image location.
E.g. …
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 support button, you will need to 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 – Add the contact page.
Create a contact page on your site and note the page URL …
Step 3 – Compose your text widget code.
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 code can be typed into a simple text file 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 image below shows which sections of the above code you need to replace with the actual contact details …
Replace the above URLs and then copy the above code to your clipboard when finished.
If you need help figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:
Next, go back to your Widgets area …
(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 a Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget settings.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget settings. 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 destination URLs into the Content box, then click Save when done …
Note: Make sure to test all URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button won’t 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 an HTML paragraph code (note: not required if you paste in formatted HTML code like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs box ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs option ticked)
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Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
After adding the widget and code, visit the front-end of your site and refresh the browser. If you have entered all of the links correctly, then your support button should display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot above shows the support contact button added to a brand new WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The final step is to make sure that your destination URL works. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to your contact page when they click on the graphic image. If you are taken to the support page, then the text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the clickable button)
Tips:
If you want a new browser window to open up when visitors click on your help button (so they don’t leave the page they’re in), then change the code from this:
To this (i.e. insert the part containing target=”_blank” in your code):
When inserting images into your sidebar navigation area, 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. As mentioned earlier, some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are narrow. If your theme’s sidebar width is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the graphic size, or the width of your sidebar column to make graphics display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure the image width does not exceed the sidebar column width)
More 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 aligned to its default settings (normally left-aligned).
- You can link your help button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the content in the text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this series of tutorials.
To keep reading, click this link:
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com