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Adding an Image to a Sidebar Widget

Using text widgets, you can put all kinds of things in your sidebar as well as the usual categories, pages, recent posts, blogroll etc.

You could add a photo of yourself, a photo from a post with a snippet of text linking to that post, a photo of a new product, a book review, a membership logo or anything else you want to put in front of your audience. If you look at the sidebar on this blog, you will see that I have added a screenshot of the latest website I have designed with a link taking people to it.

To add an image to your sidebar, you need to be able to

• Resize the image you want to use to the exact size (in pixels) you want it to appear (you don’t want it to be wider than your sidebar or it will play havoc with your page layout)
• Know a little bit of html code (which I will teach you below).

How to Add an Image to Your Sidebar

1. You need to upload your image first under Media, then Add New
2. Once the image has uploaded, copy the full link to the image including http etc
3. Go to Appearance/Widgets and drag a text widget into your sidebar on the right
   
4. Enter html code below and replace the link url with the image link you copied
5. Replace hyperlink (if you want one)
6. Replace alt text (for search engines) and title text (when someone holds their mouse over an image) as appropriate.

Code to display photo only

<img src=”http://nzwebsites.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/pepwebsite.jpg” alt=”Parenting Enhancement Programme Website”>

Download code for photo linked to website or blog page

<a href=”http://www.parent-help.co.nz” target=”_blank”><img src=”http://nzwebsites.files.wordpress.com/2007/09/pepwebsite.jpg” alt=”Parenting Enhancement Programme Website”></a>

What is a Website Slug?

The title of each post you write on your blog is not just something catchy which appears above your content! It is very important when it comes to search engine ranking and blog searchability.

Whatever title you publish a new post or page in WordPress, a Post Slug is automatically created to make up a stand alone website address for that post/page. For example:

Post Title = Titles and Slugs for Blog Posts

Post Slug = titles-and-slugs-for-blog-posts

The post slug is then added onto the end of your blog address when visitors are veiwing that particlular post. The webpage address (url) for this post is therefore http://www.creative-web-ideas.com/index.php/2007/09/titles-and-slu…for-blog-posts/

For this reason, naming your posts using keywords and keyword-rich phrases makes it much more likely that your blog will be listed on search engine results for searches by your target markets.

How to change your post slug

You can change your slug to something different to your post title as long as you have no spaces and include dashes between words. If you are not sure where to find the post slug field when writing a new post, click on the image on left to see a screenshot.

The latest version of WordPress has a special box (near the bottom of the page) for setting the post slug. If you can’t see it, click on screen options at the top right of your screen and tick the slug box to show this option.