In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of commonly-used blog widgets.
In this final installment, we will complete this tutorial series by configuring 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
Let’s now add a widget to display news items on the sidebar.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget title, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many feed items you would like to display in your sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to show the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for you.
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured as per the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with 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 Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to display clickable tags on the sidebar menu.
Tags displayed in the widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much to configure in this widget. 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 navigation area …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The Archives Section In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your readers access WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(Archives Widget)
There’s very little to configure in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar navigation section)
Now that you know how to configure widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful features of 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your site’s sidebar navigation area that aren’t listed in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to your sidebar area, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, no widgets have been added to the active widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and be replaced with your newly-added widgets instead.
Note: If you want nothing to appear in your sidebar area, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you completely reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the site’s sidebar menu 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 rearrange 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), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress administration area and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Enable 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 …
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 its settings, selecting a widget location, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, 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 modifying 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 restore the drag-and-drop function to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – An Easy 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 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 would like to display in your sidebar…
Ensure 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 add content on the sidebar navigation area, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we want is to copy the code of the content to be pasted into the sidebar widget.
After composing your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in your editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Area.
Add a new Text widget to your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your custom widget is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
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