In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you are going to how to complete this tutorial by configuring a few more frequently-used 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 An RSS Widget To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
Let’s add An RSS widget to your sidebar navigation section.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to your feed, enter it here.
- Items to display: Choose the number of items to display on your sidebar section from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to show 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 options to find the combination that best works for you.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
The example below shows the RSS widget configured with some of the other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags area …
(WordPress 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 is really very little to configure. You can add a title if you want, 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 …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another common widget.
As you continue 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 posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets blog visitors access previously published WordPress posts …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to configure. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar area)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful 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 appearing on your blog sidebar navigation area that aren’t listed under your active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to your sidebar navigation area, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will find that no widgets have actually been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with your selected widgets instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in the sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained earlier, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorganize how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use the drag & drop function to move widgets around (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 Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once accessibility mode 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 the location to add the widget, plus drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, 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 the selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the Active Widgets section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag and drop function to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets
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 site.
If you want to create your own sidebar widgets, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to show on your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of the sidebar navigation section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we need is to copy the content HTML to be pasted into the widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress editor, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, 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 custom widget is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure several commonly-used sidebar widgets.
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