In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
In this final section, you are going to complete this step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-used WordPress 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:
Adding An RSS Widget To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar.
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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget title, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of feed items you want to show in your sidebar menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that suits your preferences best.
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS 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 Section To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
Let’s now add a widget to display tags on your sidebar navigation menu.
Tags appearing in your widget are managed in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really very little to set up. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when done …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The Archives Section In Your Sidebar Menu
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you continue adding new posts 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 lets readers view previously published posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is really not much to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure a number of sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful things about using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know about 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar section that aren’t listed under the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar area, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, no widgets have actually been added to any of the active widget areas …
This is because the above theme is probably using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with your newly-added widgets instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar section.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can completely rearrange how content displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the layout in 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.
You can rearrange your sidebar layout using 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), then you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin 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 Enable accessibility mode …
(Turn 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 will display 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 your selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and 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 & drop function to your Widgets …
(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 website.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to the sidebar menu…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really looking for is to copy the content so we can paste it into your widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside your editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Now, 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure sidebar widgets.
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