In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to complete the tutorial by learning how to configure a few more commonly-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:
Adding A Newsfeed To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s add An RSS widget to display news items on the sidebar section.
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 URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to the widget, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of RSS feed items you want to show in the sidebar area from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for your site.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Let’s now add a widget to the sidebar that will display a tag list.
Tags displayed in the widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(Tags screen)
To use the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is very little to configure. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The Archives Section In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to 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 visitors to access WordPress posts that you may have published some months ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget set 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 in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional things to know about using 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar inside 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 blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This is because the theme above may be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with your newly-added widgets instead.
Note: If you want nothing to show up in your 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 …
And default widgets will not display in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily and quickly rearrange how information is displayed in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the site’s sidebar by switching 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 layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to drag & drop widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still work with widgets by enabling 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 WordPress dashboard and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress 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 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 …
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 the widget location, plus drop-down menus for specifying 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 go back to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to delete the widget from the Active Widgets area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag & drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
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 website.
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 show on the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your sidebar area, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we want is to copy the content so we can paste it into a widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside your text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Screen.
Add a new Text widget to your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your custom widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your sidebar widgets.
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