Step 12: Adding Sidebar Content (Widgets)
14. Apr, 2010 
2 Comments
Our website’s coming together but it’s looking a little, well … nude. In this lesson I’m going to show you how to add some content to the sidebar (in this case right hand column) of our website. I’ll show you how to use WordPress’ widgets to easily populate your sidebar area with content.
Widgets are awesome! They give you the ability to drag and drop content modules into your sidebar – so lets see how it’s done:
Click on the Appearance > Widget link
From the Dashboard area, or any other admin page for that matter, find and click on the Widgets link under the Appearance menu.
The Widgets Page
Welcome to the wonderful world of WordPress widgets. You’ll notice a nice big array of Available Widgets. Hear we can choose drag and drop certain types of content out of the Available Widgets area into the Sidebar area.
Add The Text Widget
Although there are heaps of cool widget to play with – and I encourage you to do so – we’re going to use the most boring of them all – the Text widget. Click on and drag the Text widget into the Sidebar.
Add Content to Your Text Widget
You should now have an empty Text widget ready to add content to. You can type in anything you like, but I’m going to add contact details to this area as it will appear on every page. I want to make it as easy as I can for visitors to contact me. Note the <br /> tags (as they’re called). These force line breaks to appear in text widgets so that all my content doesn’t run together.
Once you’re finished, click the Save button at the bottom.
Admire Your Work
Open one of your website pages and see what it looks like. You can always go back to the widgets area and play with the content.
Thanks for providing really informative entries on your site. How can I share it on Facebook?
Thanks Cardaddy. There are share buttons above that you can use to spread the word /\