In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various commonly-used blog widgets.
In this final section, we explain how to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-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
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar menu that displays RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select 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: Paste the RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to the widget, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items you would like to display on your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box 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 a published RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Section
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar that will display a tag list.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags area)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to set up 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 the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The WordPress Archives Widget In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress 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 your readers view older published posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to set up. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other useful things about using WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful 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:
Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed in your active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to the sidebar area.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, no widgets have been added to the active widget areas …
This theme may be 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 no widgets to display in your sidebar menu, 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 …
And the default widgets will not appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the layout 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.
You can reorganize your sidebar layout using widgets to improve 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 use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Enable 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 …
If you 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 a widget location, and dropdown 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 the Cancel button 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 changing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets section, 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 & drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – A Simple 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 when you install a new plugin on your website.
If you want to create a sidebar widget, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the sidebar navigation menu, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is to copy the content to be pasted into your sidebar widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress editor, click on 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 your sidebar navigation area…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"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