In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of default sidebar widgets.
In this final section, we explain how to complete the tutorial series by learning how to configure 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:
Adding An RSS Widget To Your Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to the sidebar that will display RSS feeds.
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 here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to the widget, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of RSS feed items you would like to display on the sidebar 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 if you want to display the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that best suits your preferences.
The example below shows an RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget on sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget To The Sidebar Navigation Section
Now, let’s add a widget to display a tag list on your sidebar navigation area.
Tags appearing in your widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is very little 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 finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to site users. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets visitors access less visible posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar navigation section)
Now that you know how to configure widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional features of WordPress 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 showing up on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed under the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar section.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the active widget areas …
This is because the theme above is probably using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to display in the sidebar menu, 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 to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t display in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorganize how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the layout in the sidebar area 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.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to drag and 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 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 go 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 the feature 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 …
If you 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 a location to add the widget, with drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to go back to the 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 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 function to your Widgets …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom 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 new plugins on your site.
If you want to create your own sidebar widget, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to display on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on the sidebar area, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is the code of the content so we can paste it into your widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 the sidebar navigation area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various commonly-used sidebar widgets.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now