In Part One 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 3, we began configuring a number of frequently-used WordPress blog widgets.
In this final section, we show you how 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:
Add An RSS Widget
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar that will display news items from RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find 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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to your feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items you would like to display in your sidebar area from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Section
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar that displays a tag cloud.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to set up 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the 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 visitors access older WordPress posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really very little to set up. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your WordPress widgets, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful features worth knowing 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:
Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar area that aren’t listed in your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar navigation menu, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
The above theme is using default widgets.
Once 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 the sidebar navigation menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And default widgets will not appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorganize how content displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the site’s sidebar by switching around 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 layout 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), you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch 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 links respectively …
If you 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 location to add the widget, and drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget 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 return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for editing the widget’s 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 area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own 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 area when you install new plugins on your website.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to add to your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so try and 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 so we can paste it into a widget.
After creating your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in your editor window and copy it 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum