In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete the tutorial series by learning how to configure 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:
Adding A Newsfeed To The WordPress Sidebar Menu
Now, let’s add a widget to display news items on the sidebar.
To add the widget, find 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 RSS feed URL into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional widget title, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select how many items you would like to display on your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to show the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that suits your preferences best.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget on sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS Feed 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
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar navigation area that will display tags.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are managed 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 area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s not much to set up. 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation menu …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Widget In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets visitors view WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is not much to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set for showing posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional features of WordPress 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar area that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar menu, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme is probably using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in the sidebar navigation menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets section 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 show in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained earlier, WordPress lets you easily and quickly rearrange how content displays in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the 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 help to improve visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag & drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your dashboard and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(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 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 displays the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting a location to add the widget, plus drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return 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 update your settings and go back 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 …
(Disable accessibility mode)
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 website.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widget, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to show on the sidebar navigation section…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have 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 really looking for is the content HTML to be pasted into the sidebar widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select everything in the editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Screen.
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 navigation area…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now