In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you are going to complete the 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 Your Sidebar
Let’s now add An RSS widget to the sidebar area.
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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to your feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose the number of items you want to display in the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for you.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured with the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows the 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:
Add A Tag Cloud
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar menu.
Tags displayed in your widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s not much to set up. 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 post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Widget In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you continue adding new posts 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 readers to view WordPress posts that you may have published some time ago …
(Archives Widget)
There is not much to configure. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure a number of widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, no widgets have been added to the active widget areas …
This theme is using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active 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 layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve 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 simply 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 drag-and-drop to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin area and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Switch 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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a location to add the widget, with dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for editing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to 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 function to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own 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 section when you install new plugins on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to display in your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your sidebar section, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are looking for is to copy the content HTML so we can paste it into the sidebar widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress editor, 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 navigation area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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