In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained the basics of using widgets in WordPress.
In this tutorial you are going to learn how to configure several widgets in WordPress.
Widget Configuration
In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with a number of preinstalled widgets, such as widgets that let you display links to your site’s pages, recent posts, newsfeeds, adding search features, etc.
(By default, your site comes with a number of active widgets)
Adding Sidebar Widgets In WordPress: Step-By-Step Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial series, we will add, configure and reorder various commonly-used widgets to display in the site’s sidebar, including:
- Add a clickable Support Contact image linking visitors to your contact page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section to display the latest posts.
- Adding a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display important Links on the sidebar.
- Add an RSS Feed section.
- Add clickable tags with a Tag Cloud section.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar area.
The Widgets panel can be easily accessed inside the admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Area)
Let’s begin to configure your sidebar menu widgets …
Add A Text Widget
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 instructions, image links, scripts and more to your site … simply type in text or insert HTML into the content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are really useful!)
Example: Add A Clickable Support Button To Your Sidebar Navigation Area Using A Text Widget
For this example, let’s set up a help button on your sidebar 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, create or source a “help button” graphic image that you will want your your visitors to click on …
We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of the sidebar like in the example shown below …
Step 1 – Upload your image.
Upload the image to the images folder in your server and note the URL pointing to your image location.
E.g. …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will need this information in Step 3.
In order for visitors to go to the 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 your button graphic to this URL in Step 3 …
Step 2 – Add a support page.
Create a contact page and note down its URL …
Step 3 – Create your text widget code.
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 for your clickable image.
Your instructions can be written a plain text file and will 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 sample code you will need to replace with your 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:
Now, go back into your Widgets section …
(Widgets Screen)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where the button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag your Text widget to the Active Widgets section and release the widget at the top of the Widget Area …
(Dragging and dropping your WordPress text widget)
Step 5 – Configure the text widget.
Click on the Text widget title bar to configure the widget options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into the text widget content area and click save …
Add a title to the widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Get Help”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination links into the Content box, then click the save button …
Note: Remember to test all URLs before pasting scripts into your Text Widget, or your clickable button won’t 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: this is not necessary if you type in HTML content like we’re doing in this tutorial).
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option not checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box unchecked)
Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs option ticked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box checked)
***
Step 6 – Refresh the browser.
Once you have added 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 clickable support button will display at the top of your site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable support button widget on blog sidebar)
The above screenshot shows the contact button in the sidebar of a newly-installed WordPress site.
Step 7 – Test your button.
The last step is to make sure that your links work. Test the button to make sure that your visitors will go to the help page when they click on the graphic image. You should be taken to the support page …
(Test your text widget to ensure you’ve set up everything correctly)
Tips:
If you would like the contact page to display in a new browser 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. add the part that says: target=”_blank” in the text widget code):
When inserting images into your sidebar area, make sure that the width of the image doesn’t exceed the width of the sidebar column, especially if you are using a non-responsive WordPress theme. As we’ve previously explained, some themes may display different column widths 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 images, then you may have to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar section.
(Make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
Extra Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your button image 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 contact button to any URL you like (e.g. to an external link, contact form, FAQ page, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links in your widget.
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This is the end of section two of this tutorial series on how to use WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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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)