In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we are going to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-used sidebar 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 The Sidebar Section
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar section that will display news updates from RSS feeds.
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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a widget title, type it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you want to show on your sidebar menu from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to display the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your site.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget on blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud To Your Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar that displays clickable tags.
Tags displayed in your widget can be found in the Tags area …
(WordPress Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is 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 done …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation area …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Section In The Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another common widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in 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 your site visitors access WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up here. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional 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:
Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your site’s sidebar section that aren’t showing up under your 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 the sidebar.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
The theme above is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added 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 section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation section.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained earlier, with WordPress you can quickly and easily rearrange how information is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the site’s sidebar section by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag-and-drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on 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 link respectively …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the widget, and drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click 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 editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to remove 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 …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
Most widgets will either be installed by default when you create a new WordPress site, or be automatically added to your Available Widgets area by plugins that you install on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to display on the sidebar menu…
Make sure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on the blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is to copy the code of the content so we can paste it into the widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select everything in the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Now, 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.
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