In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets.
In this final section, we will complete this step-by-step tutorial by configuring 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 Section To Your Sidebar Navigation Section
Now, let’s add a widget to display news items on your sidebar section.
To add the widget, select 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 RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget feed, enter it here.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items to display in the sidebar menu from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured with the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar navigation section)
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using 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
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation section that displays clickable tags.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags area …
(Tags screen)
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 is 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 finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation area …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget set 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 Your WordPress Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common WordPress 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 site readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your readers to access WordPress posts that you may have published some months ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional 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:
Overriding Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed in the active sidebar in the 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, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, no widgets have actually been added to any of the active widget areas …
This is because the above theme is obviously using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to display in your sidebar navigation section, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorder how content is displayed in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have change the widget elements in the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience.
If, however, 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), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Turn 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 displays the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the widget location, plus dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return to your 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 update your settings and return to the Active Widgets section, 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)
Creating 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 a new plugin on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on the sidebar navigation menu…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of the sidebar menu. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is the content to paste into a sidebar widget.
After composing your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside your 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 new custom widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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