In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you will conclude the step-by-step tutorial by learning how to configure a few more useful 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 A Newsfeed To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add An RSS widget to the sidebar menu.
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 into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to the widget, enter it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of RSS feed items to display on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for your site.
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar area.
Tags displayed in your widget are listed in the Tags panel …
(Tags screen)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is not much to set up. 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 finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget configured to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your Archives Section In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology list and become less visible to users. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your readers to access previously published posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is really not much to set up. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional things to know about 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed in your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until 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 blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This is because the above theme is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with the newly-added widgets instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to appear in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the sidebar by switching around 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 layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, 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), then you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Accessibility Mode For WordPress 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 admin area and navigate to the Widgets section …
(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 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 will display the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the location to add the widget, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing 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 remove the widget from the Active Widgets section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – A Simple Cheat
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 a new plugin on your website.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to add to your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is to copy the content HTML to be pasted into the sidebar widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside your text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie