Tag: WordPress Widgets

In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we cover the basics of how to use widgets in WordPress.

In this tutorial you will learn how to begin configuring various WordPress widgets.

How To Configure Commonly-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets

By default, your site comes with several built-in widgets that can be used out of the box with little to no configuration needed, such as widgets that let you display external links, filter posts by categories, news items, adding a search box, etc.

(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several preinstalled widgets)

Adding Widgets To The Blog Sidebar Navigation Section: Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial, you will add, configure and reorder a number of frequently-used widgets, including:

• Add a Support Contact graphic linking visitors to your help page.
• Add a Categories section.
• Add a Recent Posts section.
• Adding a list of the site’s main Pages.
• Display a list of useful Links on your sidebar.
• Adding an RSS Feed section.
• Add tags to your sidebar using a Tag Cloud.
• Configure how Archived Posts display on the sidebar section.

The Widgets panel is located inside the WP administration area and can easily be accessed from the WP admin menu by going to Appearance > Widgets …

(Widgets Menu)

This brings you to the Widgets section in your browser window …

(Widgets Screen)

Let’s begin by configuring a WordPress text widget …

Add A Text Widget To The Sidebar Menu

Text widgets are incredibly 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)

Text widgets can be used to add lists, social media buttons, scripts and more to your site … simply type in text or add HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …

(Text widgets are really versatile!)

Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Support Button To The Sidebar Area

For this example, let’s set up a support button on the 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 graphic image that visitors can click on …

We’ll set up a 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 clickable button image on your site, you must first upload the button image to the images folder in your server and note down the path to your image location.

For example …

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

This information will be used in Step 3.

In order for visitors to go to your contact page when the support button is clicked, either create a contact page, or have an existing destination page already set up (e.g. a helpdesk). We will link the button image to this URL in Step 3 …

Step 2 – Create your destination page.

Create a contact page and note down its URL …

Step 3 – Create the code for your text widget.

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 typed in 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 screenshot below shows which sections of the above sample code 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 figuring out basic HTML code, see this tutorial:

• Using Formatting Content Using HTML In WordPress

Now, go back into your Widgets screen …

(Widgets Panel)

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, select the Text widget …

(Text widget)

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

(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure the widget settings.

Click on the Text widget title bar to configure its options. Paste the code with the links to your contact page and graphic button into your text widget content area and click the save button …

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 large text box, then click the save button …

Note: Make sure to check your contact page and button image URLs before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or the button will not work.

*** If using WordPress version pre-4.8 ***

If you’re adding text with no 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 content like we’re doing in this tutorial).

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

(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box selected …

(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh your web browser.

After adding the text widget and HTML code, go to the front end of your site and refresh the web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then your clickable support button will display at the top of your sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on sidebar)

The screenshot above shows a clickable button added to a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test your widget.

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

(Test your text widget to make sure you’ve set up everything correctly)

Useful Tips:

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

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

When choosing images to add to your sidebar 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 different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If the sidebar of your theme is narrower than the width of the graphic image, then you may need to either adjust the size of your images, or the column width to make elements display correctly on your sidebar section.

(Make sure the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)

Extra Tips:

• If you don’t want to center the image 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 contact button to any destination you like (e.g. to an external site, contact form, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links inside the text widget.

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This is the end of section two of this series of tutorials.

To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:

• Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Blog Sidebar – Part Three

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