In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets.
In this final section, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial by learning how to configure 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:
Add A Newsfeed Section
Let’s now add a widget to display news items on your sidebar menu.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress 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 would like to add a title to the widget, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of feed items you would like to display on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your website.
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with some of the other options selected …
(WordPress 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 Tag Cloud widget to display tags on your sidebar.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags screen …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The WordPress Archives Widget In The Sidebar Navigation Section
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another common widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in 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 visitors view older published posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really not much 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 . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget configured for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the commonly-used sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar navigation area that aren’t showing up under your 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 section.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to display in your sidebar area, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar menu.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorganize how content displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(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 menu 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 using widgets can improve your site’s visitor 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), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress 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 …
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 for specifying the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to go back to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and return to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the Active Widgets section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating 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 area when you install a new plugin on your website.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widgets, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display on the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar menu. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really looking for is to copy the code of the content to be pasted into the widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 is now added to the sidebar navigation section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie