In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of default blog widgets.
In this final installment, we are going to complete this step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-used WordPress 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
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar that will display news updates from An RSS feed.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose how many items you want to show on the sidebar navigation section from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you want to display the feed item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that suits your needs best.
The example below shows an RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to blog sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget To Your Sidebar Navigation Section
Let’s now add a widget to display tags on your sidebar.
Tags displayed in the widget are managed in the Tags section …
(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 is really not much to configure in this widget. You can add a 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 widget displaying WordPress 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:
How To Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue 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 allows your readers to access dated content …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really not much to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional ways to use 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 site’s sidebar that aren’t listed under your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
This theme could be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used 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.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t display in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorder how content is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar layout with 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.
Enabling 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 WordPress administration area and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once accessibility mode 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 …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the widget location, plus drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, 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 your selected widget with options for editing its 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 section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag and drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets
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 a new plugin on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to your sidebar navigation section…
Ensure 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 the sidebar menu, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we want is the code of 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 and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, 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 new custom widget will be added to the sidebar navigation area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your sidebar widgets.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)