In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, we will complete this step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-used WordPress 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 A Newsfeed To The Sidebar Section
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar that displays news updates from An RSS feed.
To add the widget, select 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 into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget feed, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of RSS feed items you want to show on the sidebar navigation area from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you would like to show the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed 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 displayed on sidebar navigation area)
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget
Let’s now add a widget to display a list of tags on the sidebar section.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to set up here. You can add a widget 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 WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget set to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Widget In The Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets blog visitors view previously published posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s really not much to set up in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget configured for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used default WordPress sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful features of 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 site’s sidebar that aren’t showing up in your active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
The above theme is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with the newly-added widgets instead.
Note: If you want nothing 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 won’t appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly and easily rearrange how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the site’s sidebar section 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 with widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
If, however, 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), then you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On 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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a location to add the widget, plus drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to 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 restore the drag-and-drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom 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 section by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create a sidebar widgets, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display in the sidebar section…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar navigation area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are looking for is to copy the content HTML to be pasted into your widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Now, 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 new widget will be added to the sidebar section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now