Using Text Widgets In WordPress

I was recently contacted by a reader of this blog who needed help with installing the MyBlogLog widget that displays on this site, into his own blog. So, I decided to write it up as a blog post to explain to him and anyone else that might be wondering.

The first thing on our agenda are Text Widgets.

In many cases, the built-in Text Widget can be used to add new abilities to your sidebar. The Widget Plugin allows you to specify how many text widgets you need. Once you have specified the number of text widgets you need, each of those widgets is added to the “Available Widgets” column in the Presentation, Sidebar Widget Administration Panel.

Start off my logging into your WordPress administration panel and click on Presentation. Then click on Widgets. Scroll to the bottom until you see something similar to the image displayed at the top of this post. Choose from 1-9 widgets and click ok. This will add the selected amount of Text Widgets to your widget container. Drag on any one of these text widgets from the bottom and drag it into your preferred sidebar.

Click on the icon which displays on the right hand side of the widget.

This configuration box has two text areas. One for giving the widget a name while the other is used to paste or write your custom code. Text widgets can accept plain text or HTML code. After configuring the display of your widget on MyBlogLog.com, copy the script code that they give you and paste it into this text widget. Click the widget configuration box and then click the SAVE BUTTON.

Alternatively, you can click on the GRAB THIS link that is located on my very own MyBlogLog widget. This will bring up a dialog box which looks like this:

After you type in your domain, click on Continue or the GET CODE button. Take that code and paste it into the text widget you created and click the SAVE BUTTON. If you would like to create and style your widget, create an account on MyBlogLog and then click on the WIDGETS link. The link to my account looks like this http://www.mybloglog.com/buzz/community/jeffro2pt0/widgets/ This is where you can configure various options and display properties related to the widget.

Hopefully, this helps out Johnette and everyone else out there that might of been wondering how to use text widgets or how to integrate the MyBlogLog widget into their WordPress blog.

Speaking of MyBlogLog, please join my MBL Community if you have not done so already. It’s an excellent way to gain new networking relationships as well as discovering new blogs to add to your feed reader.