In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of WordPress widgets.
In this final section, we are going to complete this tutorial series by configuring a few more useful 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 Sidebar Navigation Menu
Let’s add a widget to the sidebar navigation section that will display news updates from RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Select how many feed items to display in your sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to show the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best works for you.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To The WordPress Sidebar Navigation Section
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags section …
(Tags area)
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 is 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 …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your WordPress Archives Widget In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to site readers. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets readers access your previously published posts …
(WordPress Archives 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 your Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget configured for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the commonly-used widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional 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:
How To Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to the sidebar navigation section, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
The above theme could be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not display in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, WordPress lets you quickly reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the layout in the site’s sidebar area 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.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user 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 use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Accessibility Mode For Widgets
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 dashboard and go to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(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 …
If you 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 widget location, plus dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button 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 delete 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)
How To Create Your Own Custom 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 a new plugin on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to show on your sidebar navigation section…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of the sidebar navigation area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really want is to copy the content 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…
Now, go into your Widgets Screen.
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 custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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