The left and right sidebars on a WordPress site are populated by little customizable boxes of content called widgets. These sidebars appear on every page of your site, so they’re a great place to put important info and links. Typically for a microsite about a book, we create a widget with the book’s jacket image, a widget of hardcover and ebook purchasing links, and links to the author’s social network accounts (or similar). It’s also a great place to put info like upcoming events.
To manage widgets, log in to WordPress. In your Dashboard, go down the left sidebar to Appearance. If you don’t see the dropdown menu, click the arrow to the right of “Appearance”. Click Widgets.
In the main part of the screen, you will see all of the options for types of widgets. On the right sidebar, you can see spaces designated to correspond to the sidebars of your theme (left and/or right and/or top and/or footer, depending on how your chosen theme is structured). Select the widgets you’d like to incorporate, and drag and drop them in the designated locations on the right. You can slide them up and down to manipulate their order.
The most useful type of widget is Text. This is basically a blank widget where you can add text or html.
Jacket Image and Physical Book Buy Link
To add the jacket image and physical book “buy” link as a widget, drag the Text widget box to your preferred location on the right. Title the widget (something like “Buy the Hardcover”). Paste in this code, replacing the ISBN placeholders in red with your book’s ISBNs:
<center>
<a href=”/catalog/searchresults.cfm?adv=y&ean=9780123456789“>
<img src=”http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/assets/product/9780123456789.gif” width=”200″ />
</a>
<br/>
<a href=”http://www.hmhbooks.com/books/buybooks.html?isbn13=9780123456789&isbn10=0123456789“>
<img src=”http://www.hmhbooks.com/chimpsoffauna/buy_button_red.gif” >
</a>
<br/>
</center>
Ebook Links
To add ebook buy links, you’ll have to do some prep work. Visit the major ebook retailers and search for your book, then copy the URL for the book’s page on the sites.
Kindle store: http://www.amazon.com/kindle-store-ebooks-newspapers-blogs/b?ie=UTF8&node=133141011
Nook store: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/nook/index.asp
Sony Reader store: http://ebookstore.sony.com/
Kobo store: http://kobobooks.com/
When you have your links ready, add a new text widget to your sidebar. Title the widget (“Buy the Ebook”). Paste in the code below, adding your links where indicated in red:
<center>
<a href=”Kindle Link” target=”blank” / >
<img src=”http://www.hmhbooks.com/nemesis/amazon.jpeg” height=”40″ / ></a>
<a href=”Nook Link” target=”blank” / >
<img src=”http://www.hmhbooks.com/nemesis/bn.jpeg” height=”40″ / ></a>
<a href=”Sony Link” target=”blank” / >
<img src=”http://www.hmhbooks.com/nemesis/sony.gif” height=”40″ / ></a><br/>
<a href=”Kobo Link” target=”blank” / >
<img src=”http://www.hmhbooks.com/nemesis/kobo.jpg” height=”40″ / ></a>
</center>