In Part 1 of this tutorial, 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 various WordPress sidebar widgets.
In this final section, we show you how to complete this tutorial series by configuring a few more useful 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 A Newsfeed Section To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar navigation section that displays news items from An RSS feed.
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 URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget title, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items you want to show on the sidebar navigation menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to display the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured with 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 Widget To The Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to display a tag list on your sidebar menu.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much to configure. 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 …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The WordPress Archives Section In The Sidebar Navigation Section
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to blog readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your blog visitors view previously published posts …
(Archives Widget)
There’s very little to set up. 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 an Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure various default sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar menu that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you could find that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
The theme above could be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar menu.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained earlier, WordPress lets you easily reorder how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the 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 reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag-and-drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To 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 admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(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 the widget’s settings, selecting a location to add the widget, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets screen, 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 …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Creating 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 site.
If you want to create a sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we want is the content to paste into the custom sidebar widget.
After creating your content, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Screen.
Insert a new Text widget into your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your new widget will be added to your sidebar section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure sidebar widgets.
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