In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to how to complete this tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-used 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 A Newsfeed
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to your sidebar.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to the widget, enter it here.
- Items to display: Select how many items you want to display in the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to show the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that suits your preferences best.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar navigation menu.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are managed 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 active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is not much 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 finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you publish 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 allows your readers to access previously published WordPress posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to configure. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and display post counts . 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 post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful features of 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 Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in 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 blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will find that no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above is obviously using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to display in the sidebar area, 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 to a widget area …
And default widgets will not show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how content displays in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve user experience.
If, for some reason, 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.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Enable 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 …
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 the widget location, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
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 remove the widget from the Active Widgets area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag and drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Sidebar Widgets
Most widgets 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 site.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to add to your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation menu. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on your blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is to copy the content HTML so we can paste it into the custom sidebar widget.
To get the content code, switch to 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 the sidebar navigation menu…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
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