If you are not already there go to your dashboard. If you don’t know how see Part 1 – Log In
Sidebars appear to the left and right (sometimes also above and below) of your website to display links to the various parts of your website. They also allow you to display short pieces of information. Where they appear, how many of them you have and how much room they have depends on which theme you have chosen.
1. Seven options down on the left menu of the dashboard you will see “Appearances” click on this link.
2. Now you will see more options under “Appearances” – one of them will be “Widgets” click on this option.
3. You should now see a table full of headers such as “Akismet” , “Archives”, “Calender”, these are all various widgets that you can put in your sidebar to display certain bits of information. For example if you choose the one called “Pages” you will see a list of all the pages on you website displayed on your sidebar.
4. To the right of this table of options you should see a column with a list of sidebars. Often there will be only one sidebar, but some themes will give you two or three.
5. To the right of the name of the sidebar there is a small triangle pointed down. Click this triangle. A dull grey empty box will now appear beneath the name of the sidebar.
6. Choose any information you wish to display in the sidebar from the options to the left and drag them over to the dull grey box beneath the name of the sidebar. Once you see a box outlined in dashed lines you can let the option go and it should stick to the sidebar. That option will now be displayed on your sidebar.
7. Once you have placed the option in the sidebar, you will often see a list of options appear underneath it. Change any of these options as you see fit and hit the “save” button.
8. IMPORTANT NOTE: Most sidebars have default settings, information they will display if you have chosen anything to be displayed in them. Once you have chosen any options for a sidebar all of these default settings will disappear. Therefore make sure that one of the options you place in the side bar is the “Meta” option. This will display a link to allow you to login to your site. If you forget to dispaly this option you may come back later to find there is no log in link. If this should happen, just type /wp-admin after the address of your website eg clclutheran.org/wp-admin, this will take you to the log in page.
You now have your side menus set up as you wish. In order to fill out and display basic church information such as Sunday Service times, see Part 7 – Church Info