In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of WordPress blog widgets.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete this 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:
Adding A Newsfeed To The Sidebar Navigation Section
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a widget feed, enter it here.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items you would like to display on your sidebar section from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that best suits your needs.
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar section that will display tags.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags section …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag cloud displaying post tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common WordPress widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in 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 visitors access earlier posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured for showing posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other aspects of 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:
Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar menu that aren’t listed in the active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to any of the available widget areas …
The theme above may be 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 nothing to show up in your sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar navigation section.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not display in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained earlier, with WordPress you can quickly reorganize how content displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the sidebar 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 reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience.
If, however, 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 use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on 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 its settings, selecting the location to add the widget, with dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to go back to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and return to the Active Widgets section, 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 & drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
Most widgets will either be installed by default when you create a new WordPress site, or be automatically added to your Available Widgets section when you install new plugins on your site.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widgets, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to the sidebar navigation menu…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the sidebar navigation area, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we really want is the content so we can paste it into the widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside the text 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 your sidebar section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
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