In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, you are going to conclude the step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more useful 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
Let’s now add An RSS widget to the sidebar.
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 here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to your feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items you would like to display on your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best suits your preferences.
The example below shows the RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows the 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 Section To The WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags section …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really very little to set up here. 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 done …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Section In Your Sidebar Section
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to visitors. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your visitors view WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(Archives Widget)
There is not much to set up in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful features worth knowing about 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 site’s sidebar navigation area that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar menu, 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 in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will disappear and be replaced with your selected widgets instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar area.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not display in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how information displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use drag & drop to move 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.
Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and go to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit link respectively …
If you 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 a location to add the widget, with drop-down 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 the Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for changing the widget’s 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 …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
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 by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to show on your sidebar area…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your sidebar navigation menu, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are looking for is to copy the content to paste into the widget.
After writing your content, 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 new widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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