In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various WordPress blog widgets.
In this final installment, we explain how to complete the tutorial series by learning how to configure 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:
Add A Newsfeed Section
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar section.
To add the widget, select 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 RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional title to your feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you want to display on your sidebar navigation section from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your site.
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar navigation section)
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
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to display a list of tags on your sidebar.
Tags displayed in the widget can be found in the Tags area …
(Tags screen)
To add 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 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar menu …
(Tag cloud displaying tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The Archives Widget In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common widget.
As you continue adding new content 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 allows visitors to access WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to set up here. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set up for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know about using 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 Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar navigation section that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar navigation menu.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, you could find that no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
The theme above could be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to show up in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation area.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets will not appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained previously, WordPress lets you easily reorder how content is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can improve user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use drag-and-drop to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress 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 dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(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 the widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the widget, plus dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to 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 go back to using drag and drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
How To 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 section when you install a new plugin on your site.
If you want to create your own custom sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to add to the sidebar section…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are after is to copy the content to paste into your widget.
After composing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, 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 custom widget will be added to your 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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