In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
In this final section, you are going to conclude this step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-used 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 To The WordPress Sidebar
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar navigation section.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many items you would like to display in your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for you.
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar navigation menu)
The example below shows a published RSS Feed 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 Widget To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much to set up. 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 area …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to site readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows readers to access previously published WordPress posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is really not much to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure your sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional 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:
Override Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up under the 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 navigation section.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme could be using default widgets.
Once 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 the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained previously, WordPress lets you quickly reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use the drag-and-drop function to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
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 your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on 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 …
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 dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to your 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 section, 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 and drop functionality 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 area when you install a new plugin on your website.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widgets, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display in your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really want is the code of the content so we can paste it into a widget.
To get the content code, switch to 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure several frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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