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 are going to begin configuring various frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.

How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Blog Sidebar Widgets

By default, 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 for displaying external links, recent posts, news items, adding content search features, etc.

(By default, your site comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)

How To Configure Frequently-Used WordPress Sidebar Widgets: Step-By-Step Tutorial

In this step-by-step tutorial series, you are going to learn how to add, configure and reorder various WordPress widgets, including:

• Adding a Help graphic button linking to your contact page.
• Add a Categories section.
• Add a Recent Posts section to display your latest posts.
• Add a list of Pages.
• Display Links on the sidebar area.
• Adding an RSS Feed section.
• Add a Tag Cloud.
• Adding and configuring an Archives section to your sidebar navigation section.

To access the Widgets panel log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …

(Widgets Menu)

This loads the Widgets panel in your web browser …

(Widgets Panel)

Let’s begin configuring some sidebar menu widgets …

Text Widgets

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 notices, images, news and updates and more to your site … simply type in text or paste HTML into the widget content area. You can also give the widget a title. Remember to save your settings when done …

(Text widgets are versatile!)

Example: Use A Text Widget To Add A Clickable Contact Button To The Sidebar Area

For this example, let’s set up a help button on your sidebar menu 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, you will need to create or source a “help button” graphic image that visitors can click on …

We’ll set up the clickable button to display at the top of your sidebar navigation menu like in the example shown below …

Step 1 – Upload your image.

To display an image on your site, first you must upload the button image to the images folder in your server and write down the path to your image location.

For example …

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

This information will be used in Step 3.

For someone to be taken to the contact page when the graphic 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 a support page.

Create a contact page on your site and note 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. In simple terms, you just need to create the instructions linking the button image to your contact page.

Your code can be typed in a plain text editor 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 above with the URL of your image location.

The screenshot below shows the sections of the above code that you will need to replace with your 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 understanding basic HTML code, see this tutorial:

• A Beginner’s Guide To Using HTML Tags In WordPress

Go back to your Widgets panel …

(Widgets Area)

Step 4 – Add a Text widget.

Add a Text widget to your sidebar where you want the clickable button to display.

In the Available Widgets area, select the Text widget …

(WordPress text widget)

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

(Drag and drop your WordPress text widget)

Step 5 – Configure your widget settings.

Click on the 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 the save button …

Add a title section to your widget if you want (e.g. “Need Help?”, “Support”, etc.) and paste the code with the correct URLs into the Content area, then click the save button …

Note: Remember to check all links before pasting scripts into the Text Widget, or your button will not work.

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

If 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’re pasting in HTML code 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 ticked …

(Automatically add paragraphs option unchecked)

Here is some text with Automatically add paragraphs box checked …

(Automatically add paragraphs box ticked)

***

Step 6 – Refresh the browser.

Once you have added your text widget and code content, visit the front end of your site and refresh your browser. If all links have been entered correctly, then the support button will display in your sidebar menu …

(Clickable button widget on sidebar)

The screenshot above shows the button in the sidebar of a brand new WordPress site.

Step 7 – Test the widget.

The last step is to ensure that the 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 to the contact page, then your text widget has been set up correctly …

(Test the text widget)

Tips:

If you would like a new browser window to open up when visitors go to your contact page (so they don’t leave the page they’re on), then change the code from this:

To this (i.e. add the part containing target=”_blank” in the text widget code):

When choosing images for your sidebar area, 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. Note that some themes can display different column widths depending on their templates and their layout. Some sidebars may be too wide or too narrow. If your theme’s sidebar 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 area.

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

Extra Tips:

• If you don’t want the image to be centered inside your sidebar, delete the <center> and </center> tags from the beginning and end of the HTML code. The image will then align to the left.
• Link the help button to any URL you want (e.g. to an external site, helpdesk, support forum, etc.) and change this anytime by editing the code inside the text widget.

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This is the end of part two of this series of tutorials about using WordPress widgets.

To continue reading, click here:

• Adding WordPress Widgets To The Sidebar Menu – Part 3

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