In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various commonly-used widgets.
In this final section, we are going to complete this tutorial series 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
Let’s now add An RSS 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 area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional title to your widget, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select how many items to show on the sidebar area from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your site.
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar navigation section)
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured with additional 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 Sidebar Menu
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar that displays a list of tags.
Tags displayed in your widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s not much to configure. 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 …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation area …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The WordPress Archives Widget In Your Sidebar Navigation Area
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to blog users. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your site visitors access less visible posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s not much to configure in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget set up for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional features worth knowing 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 displaying on your blog sidebar section 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 until you add widgets to your sidebar area.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to display in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation area.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information is displayed in 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 your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized 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.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to drag & drop 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.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag and drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On 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 …
If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the location to add the widget, with drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “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 will display your selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the Active Widgets area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag and drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets
Most of the widgets that you will use 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.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display on the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation menu. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really want is the content to paste into the widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, 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 navigation section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress 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)