In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, 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 default widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete this step-by-step tutorial 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:
Adding A Newsfeed To Your Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar section.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to your feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of RSS feed items you would like to show in your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for you.
The example below shows an RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS 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 Widget
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar navigation area that displays tags.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags area …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to set up here. 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation section …
(Tag cloud displaying post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to blog visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your readers to access older published posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using 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:
Overriding Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed in your active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar area.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you may find that no widgets have actually been added to any of the available widget areas …
The above theme may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in your sidebar section, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily rearrange how information displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar area by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s 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 by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable 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 admin and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Turn 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 link 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 its settings, selecting the widget location, with drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing 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 section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Disable 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 section by plugins that you install on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
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 your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is to copy the content HTML so we can paste it into the custom widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside the text 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 new custom widget will be added to your sidebar navigation section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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