In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete this tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-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:
Adding A Newsfeed To Your WordPress Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to the sidebar that displays RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(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 the number of feed items to show on your sidebar navigation menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to show the feed item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best works for you.
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar navigation section)
The screenshot below shows an 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
Let’s now add a widget to display a tag list on your sidebar.
Tags appearing in the widget are listed in the Tags section …
(Tags area)
To insert 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 very little to configure. 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 the sidebar …
(Tag cloud set to display post tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Section In The Sidebar Navigation Area
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology list and become less visible to site readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows readers to view WordPress posts that you may have published months ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up here. 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 …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget set for showing posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar area)
Now that you know how to configure various 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 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to show up in your sidebar area, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily reorganize how content displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the sidebar section 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 rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve 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 use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you 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 …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets section will display an Add link, and the widgets in the Active Widgets section will display an Edit link …
If you 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 a widget location, with drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back 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 functionality to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Creating 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 by plugins that you install on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to add to the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the sidebar area, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is to copy the content HTML to be pasted into a sidebar widget.
After writing your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, 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 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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