In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of default widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, we are going to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more useful 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 Section
Let’s add a widget to the sidebar that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress 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 widget feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you would like to display on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to display the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that best suits your preferences.
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with some of the other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget To The WordPress Sidebar
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags appearing in the widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(Tags area)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is not much 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 the sidebar navigation area …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to users. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your site readers access dated posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar section)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know 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:
Overriding Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed under your active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you could find that no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This is because the theme above could be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have explained in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the site’s 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 help improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use drag-and-drop to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets section will display an Add link, and the widgets in the Active Widgets section will display an Edit link …
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 the location to add the widget, with dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to delete the widget from the Active Widgets section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag & drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Custom 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 by plugins that you install 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 would like to display in the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put 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 the content so we can paste it into a widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress post editor, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Area.
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 area…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your sidebar widgets.
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