In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of frequently-used blog widgets.
In this final section, we show you how to complete the tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-used 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 To The Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to display news items on the sidebar navigation section.
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: Enter the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional widget title, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose how many feed items you would like to show in the sidebar area from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar area)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured using additional options selected …
(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 Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar section.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags area)
To use the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much 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 finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your Archives Widget In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to site readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets readers access WordPress posts that you may have published some time ago …
(Archives Widget)
There is really very little to configure. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional features worth knowing 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:
Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar 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 navigation section, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to any of the available widget areas …
This theme is probably using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section 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 appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly rearrange how content is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have change the widgets in the 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.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience.
If, for some reason, 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 if you enable Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(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 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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting a location to add the widget, with drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to 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 …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Sidebar Widgets
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 site.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on the sidebar navigation section…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is the content to be pasted into the widget.
After composing your content, 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 navigation section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
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