In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we are going to conclude the step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more useful 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
Let’s now add An RSS widget to your sidebar navigation area.
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 into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional widget feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Select how many 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 display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for you.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar section)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured using other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Section To The Sidebar Menu
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags displayed in the widget are listed in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags area)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget set to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The WordPress Archives Section In The Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological list and become less visible to users. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your site visitors access your previously published WordPress posts …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to configure. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional features worth knowing about 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed under your active sidebar in the 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, this site displays widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
The theme above is probably using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
Just add a blank text widget …
And default widgets will not show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily and quickly reorganize how content displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar section 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 elements using widgets can help improve user experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use the drag-and-drop function to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag and drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and navigate 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 …
(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 its settings, selecting the widget location, plus dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “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 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 & drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Turn 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 when you install new plugins on your site.
If you want to create a sidebar widgets, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to add to your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar menu. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really after is the code of the content so we can paste it into a widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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