In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of default WordPress blog widgets.
In this final installment, we are going to conclude this step-by-step tutorial by configuring 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:
Add An RSS Widget To The WordPress Sidebar Navigation Menu
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar.
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 widget feed, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items you would like to display in the sidebar menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to show the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that best suits your preferences.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured using other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar.
Tags appearing in the widget are listed in the Tags section …
(Tags area)
To use the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little to configure. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when done …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The WordPress Archives Widget In Your Sidebar Navigation Menu
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you publish new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to blog visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your visitors to access WordPress posts that you may have published some time ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s not much to configure. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know about using 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar section that aren’t listed in your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to the sidebar area, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme is 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 appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets will not display in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained earlier, with WordPress you can completely reorganize how information displays in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have change the widgets in 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.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s visitor 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), then you can still use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
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 dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress 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 …
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 the widget location, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for changing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return 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)
How To Create 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 an easy way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to show on the sidebar menu…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar navigation menu. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the sidebar navigation area, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are after is the content to be pasted into the custom sidebar widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress editor, click on 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 new widget is now added to the sidebar area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
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