In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various default blog widgets.
In this final section, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-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 To Your Sidebar
Let’s now add An RSS widget to the sidebar menu.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a widget feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items to display in the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that best works for you.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Section To Your Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display a list of tags on the sidebar section.
Tags displayed in the widget can be found in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much to configure. 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 …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows the 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:
Configuring The Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a common WordPress widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in 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 allows your readers to view older WordPress posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is not much to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways to use 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t showing up in your active sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to your sidebar section.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, you will find that no widgets have actually been added to the available widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar section.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets will not display in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily rearrange how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the sidebar section by switching around 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 layout with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag & drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your dashboard 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 …
(Enable accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit links respectively …
If you 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 widget location, with drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display your 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 area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag and drop …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – A Simple Cheat
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 new plugins on your website.
If you want to create a sidebar widgets, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to show on the sidebar navigation area…
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 try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we really want is the code of the content to be pasted into the sidebar widget.
After writing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside your 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 is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure several commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com