In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various default WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial series by learning how to configure a few more frequently-used WordPress 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 To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar section.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to your feed, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of items to show in your sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The example below shows the RSS widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget on sidebar navigation menu)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured using additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget To Your Sidebar Area
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display a tag list on the sidebar.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much to configure in this widget. 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 the sidebar navigation section …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your WordPress Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to users. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows readers to view WordPress posts that you may have published some months ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s not much to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional things to know about WordPress 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:
Overriding Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to your sidebar section, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to show up in the sidebar 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 will not appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can completely rearrange how content 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 layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged 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 reorganize your sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use drag-and-drop to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On 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 …
If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a widget location, with dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to delete the widget from the Active Widgets section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag & drop function to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets
Most widgets will either be installed by default when you create a new WordPress site, or be automatically added to your Available Widgets area when you install new plugins on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display on the sidebar navigation section…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really looking for is the content HTML to paste into the sidebar widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Screen.
Insert a new Text widget into your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your new widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)