In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
In this final section, we explain how to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more useful WordPress sidebar widgets.
In WordPress v. 4.8, WordPress introduced new media widgets covering images, audio, and video, and an updated text widget that supports visual editing …
(WordPress 4.8 introduced new widget updates)
These widgets let you add content from your media library and media stored in other servers or storage locations (e.g. Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon S3, etc.).
Let’s go through how to configure and use each of these widgets:
Rich Text Widget
From version 4.8 onward, WordPress has added native rich-text editing capabilities to text widgets …
(Rich Text Widget)
This lets you format text, create lists, add emphasis, and insert links into your sidebar text quickly and easily …
(Format text easily with the new text widget)
To learn more about using text widgets in WordPress, see the tutorial below:
WordPress Image Widget
The WordPress Image Widget lets you add an image to your sidebar from your Media Library or an external storage location.
To add an image, drag an image widget to your active widgets area …
(Image Widget)
Click on ‘Add Image’ …
(Let’s add an image!)
Select an image from the Image Library, check or add image details (e.g. Caption, Alt text, Description, etc.) if desired and click the ‘Add to Widget’ button …
(Select an image)
The image will automatically load into the widget area …
(Image added to widget)
Add a Title to your image if you want, or leave the ‘Title:’ field blank and click ‘Save’ …
(Save your image)
Preview your website and you should see the image displayed where you have placed your image widget …
(Image added to website using WordPress image widget)
If you want to link your image to an URL, go back to your image widget and click on ‘Edit Image’ …
(Image Widget – Edit Image)
Add a URL in the ‘Image Details’ > ‘Display Settings’ > ‘Link To’ screen and click the ‘Update’ button …
(Link your image to an URL)
To add an image stored in an external server or remote location, locate and copy the URL of the image to your clipboard …
(Copy image URL to your clipboard)
Go back to your image widget and click on ‘Replace Image’ …
(Image Widget – Replace image)
The Media Library browser opens. Click on ‘Insert from URL’ and paste in the image URL copied to your clipboard, then click on ‘Add to Widget’ …
(Add image URL)
If you have previously added an image title in your widget, remember to replace it if required, then click ‘Save’ …
(Save your new image)
The new image will now display on your sidebar …
(New image added using WordPress image widget)
To learn more about adding images to WordPress, see this tutorial:
WordPress Video Widget
The WordPress Video Widget lets you add audio files to your sidebar from your Media Library, YouTube, Vimeo, or an external storage location.
To add a video to the sidebar, drag a Video widget to your active widgets area …
(Drag a Video widget to your sidebar)
Click the ‘Add Video’ button …
(Video widget – Add Video)
Select a video from your media library or add a video URL and click the ‘Add to Widget’ button …
(Add a video URL)
Add a title to the widget if desired and click ‘Save’ …
(WordPress Video Widget – Save Button)
Your video will display on your site where the video widget has been added …
(Video added using WordPress video widget)
To learn more about adding video to WordPress, see this tutorial:
WordPress Audio Widget
The WordPress Audio Widget lets you add audio files like podcasts, music or a personal greeting to your sidebar from your media library or an external storage location.
To add an audio file to your sidebar, drag an audio widget to your active widgets area …
(Add an audio widget to your sidebar)
Click the ‘Add Audio’ button…
(WordPress Audio Widget – Add Audio button)
Select an audio file from your media library or insert the URL of an audio file stored in an external location …
(Select your audio file)
Add a title to your widget if desired and click the ‘Save’ button …
(Save the audio file on your audio widget)
Your site will now display an audio file to visitors where you have placed the audio widget …
(Audio file added to your site using the WordPress Audio Widget)
To learn more about adding audios to WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Newsfeed Section To The Sidebar Section
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar that displays news updates from RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional title to the widget, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items to show on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to show the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that best works for you.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud
Let’s now add a widget to display a tag list on your sidebar.
Tags displayed in your widget can be found in the Tags screen …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when done …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar area …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Widget In The Sidebar Navigation Area
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your readers to view previously published WordPress posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up here. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use widgets:
Add ‘Visibility’ Function To Widgets
Installing the Jetpack plugin not only adds many new widgets to your widgets area …
(Jetpack Widgets)
It also adds a useful ‘Visibility’ function to all WordPress widgets …
(Jetpack adds ‘Visibility’ to all widgets)
This function lets you specify whether to display or hide widgets from your sidebar based on conditions you set for a particular category, author, user. role, tag, date, or page …
(Set conditions to show or hide widgets)
This is a really useful function to have.
For example, you can:
- Display a widget only on your home page or only on posts published under certain categories, tags, authors, dates, etc.
- Configure widgets to display specific or time-sensitive announcements based on a post’s category, date, etc.
- Configure widgets to display targeted ad banners based on a post’s category or tag.
- Hide widgets from appearing on certain posts or pages to prevent users from being distracted (e.g. remove widgets with ads from your sales pages).
- And more!
To learn more about using the Jetpack plugin, go here:
Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar navigation menu that aren’t showing up in your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above is using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to display in the sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t display in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily and quickly reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag-and-drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin area and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Enable accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets section will display an Add link, and the widgets in the Active Widgets section will display an Edit link …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a location to add the widget, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for editing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and return to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the Active Widgets area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag & drop …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
Most widgets will either be installed by default when you create a new WordPress site, or be automatically added to your Available Widgets section when you install a new plugin on your site.
If you want to create a sidebar widget, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to display in the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on the sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we need is to copy the content HTML to paste into a widget.
After composing your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Area.
Add a new Text widget to your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your custom widget is now added to your sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
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