In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we cover the basics of using WordPress widgets.
In this section you will learn how to configure a number of WordPress widgets.
How To Configure Commonly-Used WordPress Sidebar 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 needed, such as widgets that let you display external links, recent posts, newsfeeds, adding a search box, etc.
(In a default WordPress installation, your site comes with several pre-installed widgets)
How To Set Up Commonly-Used Sidebar Widgets: Tutorial
In this step-by-step tutorial, we will add, configure and reorder various widgets, including:
- Adding a Support Contact image linking to the contact details page.
- Adding a Categories section with a drop down menu.
- Adding a Recent Posts section.
- Adding a list of your site’s Pages.
- Display important Links on your sidebar section.
- Displaying news items using an RSS Feed section.
- Add a Tag Cloud section.
- Adding and configuring an Archives section to the sidebar.
The Widgets panel is located in your WP administration area and can easily be accessed from the administration menu by clicking on Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
This brings up the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
Let’s start by learning how to configure a WordPress text widget …
Adding Text Widgets
Text widgets are incredibly useful …
(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 area or other widget sections, such as comments, ads, messages and more to your site … just type in text or insert HTML into the widget content area. You can also add an optional title in the Title field. Remember to save your settings …
(Text widgets are really useful!)
Example: Using A Text Widget To Add A Help Button To The Sidebar Menu
For this example, we’ll set up a contact button on your 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, create or source a graphic image that your visitors can 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, you must first upload the graphic image to your server and note down the path to your server’s image location.
For example …
http://www.yourdomain.com/images/supportbutton.jpg
You will use this information in Step 3.
In order for someone to go to your contact page when they click on the graphic 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 – Add your destination page.
Create a contact page and note the page 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. Basically, you just need to create the instructions linking your button image to your destination URL.
Your code can be written a simple text file and will 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 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 page and image URLs …
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, refer to this tutorial:
Next, go back into your Widgets section …
(Widgets Area)
Step 4 – Add a Text widget.
Add a Text widget to your sidebar in the location where your support button should display.
In the Available Widgets area, find the Text widget …
(Text widget)
Drag the Text widget to your Active Widgets section and release the widget at the very top of the Widget Area …
(Drag-and-drop your Text widget)
Step 5 – Configure your widget settings.
Click on the Text 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 the save button …
Add a title to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct destination URLs into the large text box, then click Save when done …
Note: Remember to check 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 with no 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 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 checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box not selected)
Here is some text added to a Text widget with Automatically add paragraphs option checked …
(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)
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Step 6 – Refresh your browser.
After adding your text widget and formatted content, visit your site and refresh your web browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the clickable support button will display in the site’s sidebar menu …
(Clickable button widget on 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 make sure that the clickable button works. Test this by clicking on the graphic button. If you are taken directly to the contact page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …
(Test the clickable button to make sure you’ve set up everything correctly)
Useful Tips:
If you want a new 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. add the section containing target=”_blank” in your code):
When adding images to your sidebar menu, make sure that the width of the image does not exceed the width of the 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 their layout. Some sidebars are wide and some are 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 graphics display correctly on your sidebar.
(Make sure that the image width does not exceed the width of the sidebar column)
Additional Tips:
- If you don’t want to center your 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 destination you want (e.g. to an external link, contact form, forum, etc.) and change this anytime by replacing the links in the text widget.
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This is the end of section 2 of this tutorial on using WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to keep reading:
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