In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various default widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, you are going to how to complete this tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-used 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:
Adding A Newsfeed Section To The Blog Sidebar
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation area that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select 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 URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to your feed, enter it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of RSS feed items to display in the sidebar section from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you would like to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box 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 the RSS widget configured using the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress 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 the sidebar that displays a list of tags.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags section …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much to set up here. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when done …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag cloud displaying post tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to blog visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows site visitors to access older posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is not much to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of widgets, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional features of 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar navigation area that aren’t listed in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to display in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets won’t appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor 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.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
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 admin area and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on accessibility mode)
Once accessibility mode has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit link respectively …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a widget location, with drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back to the Active Widgets section, 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 and drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom 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 section by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widget, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display in the sidebar menu…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we want is to copy the code of the content to paste into the custom sidebar widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside the text editor window and copy it 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…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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