In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to how to complete the tutorial by learning how to configure 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 add a widget to display news items on your sidebar.
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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to the feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you want to display on the sidebar navigation section from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you would like to display the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the feed item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for your website.
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar section)
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget To The Sidebar Menu
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, select 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 set up. You can add a title if you want, 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 area …
(Tag cloud set to display post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to 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 lets your site visitors access dated content …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful features of 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar navigation menu that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to your sidebar area.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you could find that no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This is because the theme above is 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 don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar navigation menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar menu.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience.
If, however, 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), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and navigate to the Widgets section …
(WordPress 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 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 location to add the widget, and drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back to the Active Widgets screen, 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 & drop function to your Widgets …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom 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 site.
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 would like to display in your sidebar menu…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on the sidebar navigation menu, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are looking for is the code of the content so we can paste it into the widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in your editor window and copy it 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 custom widget is now added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure several commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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