In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various default WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete this step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more useful 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 A Newsfeed To The WordPress Sidebar
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar that will display news items from An RSS feed.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress 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 a widget title, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you want to show on the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to show the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that suits your preferences best.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget on sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display a tag list on your sidebar navigation menu.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to configure in this widget. 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 finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation menu …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your WordPress Archives Section
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content 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 visitors to view dated posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is not much to set up here. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set for showing posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget added to sidebar area)
Now that you know how to configure sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget 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:
Override Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to the sidebar navigation menu, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
The theme above may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to display 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 to a widget area …
And default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily rearrange how content displays in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help improve visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag and drop (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.
Enabling Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once accessibility mode 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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a widget location, with dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to return 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 go back to using drag & drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Create 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 area when you install a new plugin on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to show on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we need is the content to paste into a widget.
After creating your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 widget is now added to the sidebar section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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