In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete this tutorial series by learning how to configure 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 A Newsfeed
Let’s now add An RSS widget to the sidebar.
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 field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional title to your widget, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you would like to show in the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured as per the above settings …
(RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured with some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To Your Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to the sidebar that will display tags.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to set up. You can add a 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 your sidebar navigation menu …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used widget.
As you continue adding new content 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 allows site visitors to access earlier content …
(Archives Widget)
There is really very little to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar section)
Now that you know how to configure most of the commonly-used widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful ways to use 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar navigation section 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 your sidebar navigation menu, 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 been added to the available widget areas …
This is because the above theme could be using default widgets.
As soon as 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 want nothing to show up in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar menu.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorder how content displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the sidebar area by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use the drag & drop function to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(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 …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a location to add the widget, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for changing the widget’s 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 go back to using drag & drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – An Easy 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 new plugins on your website.
If you want to create your own sidebar widgets, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to display on the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of the sidebar area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have 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 are really looking for is to copy the code of the content to be pasted into the custom widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 widget will be added to your sidebar area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your sidebar widgets.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum