In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more useful 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:
Add An RSS Widget To Your Sidebar
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to display news items on your sidebar navigation section.
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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget title, enter it here.
- Items to display: Choose the number of items to show in your sidebar area from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to show the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured using the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To Your Sidebar Section
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display tags on the sidebar area.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To use the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar navigation section …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your readers to access WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful 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 Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar navigation menu that aren’t showing up in your active sidebar in your 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 some widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in your sidebar menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar menu.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained earlier, WordPress lets you easily reorder how information displays in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the layout in the sidebar area by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can rearrange your sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag & 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.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and go to the Widgets section …
(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 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 will display the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the widget location, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected 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 the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for editing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and 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-and-drop function to your Widgets …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Create Your Own 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 when you install new plugins on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to show on the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we want is to copy the content so we can paste it into the custom sidebar widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in the editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Screen.
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 WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum