How to Optimize your WordPress Text Box Widget
As I review sites I notice that a lot of sidebars have difficulty with their banners, icons and text links. The objects are often stacked one on top of the other which can confuse visitors and even turn them off looking at them.
What is required is a nice open sidebar with each of the banners, icons or text links having their own space. This makes for clearer viewing and of course invites the reader to click – which after all is generally their purpose.
What is the cause of this crowding? Experiences users will know that you can stack more than one piece of code into a text box in the widget area. (This also holds true for other platforms such as Drupal which uses a text block). Often all that is needed is a blank line between the code. In some themes this will place a blank line between banners and icons.
The theme I am using doesn’t oblige. I can put 20 blank lines between the codes and still get them stacked up against each other. The key lies in the use of the text boxes. Text boxes use HTML and Java (in some cases PHP) to render the objects you are placing. If you treat the text box as a mini page that requires coding you will understand the following.
For novices, read on. For experienced users you can skip this first section. (click on images to see full size view).
Go to Admin, Presentation (1), Widgets(2). If you do not have a text box in your widgets area, drag one up. Click on the shaded area in the top left corner of the text box(3). The text box will open ready for editing.
As you can see from this image, I have inserted several lines of code that will place white space between the various objects. Often you can use something as simple as the <br> code or <br />. My theme rejects even this code so I need to include the <br> to get the desired result. You will need to play around with the code a little. You can use <br> or <br> <br> – try them out to see what works best.
I have included the <center> code at the start (don’t forget the </center> at the end) which of course centers the objects within the sidebar.
As can be seen here, the objects are centered, nicely spaced and very easy to read and access. The sidebar as a whole looks clean and tidy.
To finish, click the close icon(6), be sure to update(7) then go and view the results. Once you get used to working on the sidebars you will find you can place all the related material together in the one text box.
Other quick tips: Keep your page alive when editing by using the right click on Admin to open it in a new window (or tab). Every time you make a change go back to you live page and refresh – if you don’t like the results you can go back to editing without having to click admin, presentation, widget etc. Just click between open screens. These tips will also work on Drupal, the process for inserting the code is obviously different – just go to the admin – manage blocks to edit a block – the code has the same results.
I am sure there are cleaner ways of doing this and if you do use a different or cleaner method – please feel free to share it.
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Blogging, WordPress
tips to improve wordpress, tips to improve your blog, wordpress optimization, wordpress reviews, wordpress sidebar tips
ah this is totally helpful…specially for me who understand nothing about wordpress but im having fun discovering … thanks for the tip!!
I wanted to know if I have to buy something from Wordpress in order to have it look like yours? I want more pages, and links, and I want everything to have a page, or to be clean looking, but cant seem to get it together. I have a page in word press, but I cant get that one the way I want it either. mvkq3.wordpress.com
The blog post is informative, but I found the title to be very misleading. I arrived here, thinking you were going to explain how to do something that would cause my text widgets to improve my PageRank or search engine rankings.
Keep these type of posts coming, just be careful using the “optimize” word.
Lee Kendrick
http://leekendrick.com/blog/
Hey thats great you have made it a do follow blog
But my question is always do u get quality comments ??
By this, will your pagerank increase ??? And if i comment these types of blog, then will my blog pagerank ang technorati rank will increase ??
Hope you will answer my question . Because I’m thinking to turn my blog into a do-follow blog .
thanx for ur nice seo information where i can find more information about? would be glad if u can send me via email or say it here i will return after the weekend think monday or thur.