In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more frequently-used 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 Section To Your WordPress Sidebar
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar menu that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find 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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a widget feed, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of feed items to show on the sidebar area from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud To Your Sidebar
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to display tags on your sidebar menu.
Tags displayed in the widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags area)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little to set up here. You can add a title, 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 post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your blog readers access WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s not much to set up in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget configured for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of default sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know about using 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 displaying on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t showing up in your active sidebar in the 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, this site displays a couple of widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to appear in your sidebar section, 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 to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not display in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you completely reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the site’s sidebar by switching 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 rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience.
If, however, 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 using drag-and-drop.
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 your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Enable 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 links respectively …
If you 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 the widget location, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget location (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 the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for modifying the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and return to the Active Widgets section, 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 go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom 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 section by plugins that you install on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display in the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really looking for is to copy the content HTML to paste into a widget.
After composing your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in your editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Now, 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 new widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)