In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various WordPress blog widgets.
In this final installment, we will conclude the tutorial series 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 To Your Sidebar Section
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar area that displays news updates from RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select 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 want to add a widget feed, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items to show in your sidebar navigation menu from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to display tags on your sidebar section.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(WordPress 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’s not much 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 finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar section …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Widget In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common widget.
As you publish new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to blog visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets blog readers view WordPress posts that you may have published some months ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to configure. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar in a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful things to know about 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed 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 the sidebar.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar menu.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily and quickly reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the layout in the 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.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, 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 work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once accessibility mode has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit link respectively …
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 the location to add the widget, plus dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for modifying the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets section, 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 & drop …
(Switch off 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 by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display in your sidebar navigation section…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to 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 blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really need is to copy the content HTML to be pasted into the sidebar widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select everything in 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 will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various 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)