In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various default widgets.
In this final installment, you will complete the step-by-step tutorial series by learning how to configure a few more commonly-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 Section
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to your sidebar section.
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: Paste the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to your feed, enter it here.
- Items to display: Choose the number of RSS feed items you would like to display on your sidebar navigation section from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your website.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar menu)
The example below shows the 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:
Add A Tag Cloud Section To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags area …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To use 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 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 your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Section In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology list and become less visible to site readers. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows readers to access older WordPress posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is really not much to set up. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of default WordPress sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional 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:
Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed in the active sidebar inside the 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 blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you could find that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
The above theme is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar navigation menu, 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 …
And default widgets won’t appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how information displays in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the layout in the site’s sidebar area by switching 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 with widgets to improve user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets 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 Accessibility Mode For Widgets
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 administration area and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Enable 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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the location to add the widget, plus dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and return to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to delete 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 …
(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 section by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create your own sidebar widgets, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display on your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we need is to copy the content so we can paste it into your sidebar widget.
After writing your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, 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 new custom widget is now added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group