In Part One of this step-by-step 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 frequently-used widgets.
In this final section, you are going to conclude this step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more frequently-used 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
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to your sidebar navigation menu.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a widget feed, enter it here.
- Items to display: Choose how many items you want to show in the sidebar menu from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to sidebar navigation area)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured with some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget
Let’s add a widget to display a list of tags on the sidebar navigation section.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags area …
(Tags area)
To use the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is 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 menu …
(Tag cloud displaying tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your WordPress Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to blog readers. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your site readers view WordPress posts that you may have published some time ago …
(Archives Widget)
There is not much to configure. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your WordPress widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful things to know about 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 appearing on your site’s sidebar that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar menu.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you may find that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This theme is using default widgets.
Once 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 no widgets to display in the sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar area.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, WordPress lets you easily and quickly reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the layout in the sidebar section 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 with widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag-and-drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For 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 and go to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit link respectively …
If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting a location to add the widget, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to 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 restore the drag-and-drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
Most of the widgets that you will use 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 website.
Here is an easy way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to show on your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we want is the code of the content to be pasted into the custom sidebar widget.
After composing your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Area.
Insert a new Text widget into your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your custom widget is now added to your sidebar navigation area…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
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