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 various default sidebar widgets.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete 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:
Adding An RSS Widget To The WordPress Sidebar Area
Let’s now add a widget to display news items on the sidebar.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(WordPress 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 an optional widget title, enter it here.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items you would like to display in your sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to display the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to blog sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud
Now, let’s add a widget to display a tag list on your sidebar area.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much to set up. 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 your sidebar …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget configured for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common 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 site users. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets blog visitors view WordPress posts that you may have published some months ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s very little to set up here. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional things to know 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:
Overriding Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to your sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have actually been added to the available widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to appear in your sidebar navigation menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can easily reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the site’s sidebar section by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag and drop (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.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress 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 …
(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 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 …
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, with dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected 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 an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and return to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to delete 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 …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – A Simple 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 by plugins that you install on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar area. 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 publishing your Post – all we are after is to copy the code of the content to be pasted into your widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 a number of sidebar widgets.
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