In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of default widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete this 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 To Your Sidebar
Let’s now add An RSS widget to your sidebar menu.
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 URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select how many feed items to show in the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured using other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget To The Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display clickable tags on the sidebar.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags area)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little to set up here. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar menu …
(Tag cloud displaying post tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used WordPress 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 allows readers to access your previously published posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to set up here. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(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 sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know about using 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to your sidebar navigation section.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have actually been added to the active 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 placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with your newly-added widgets instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in the sidebar, 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 won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained earlier, with WordPress you can completely rearrange how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have change the widgets in the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor 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.
Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the 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 the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Switch 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 …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the widget, plus drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to 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-and-drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
How To Create 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 area by plugins that you install on your site.
If you want to create your own sidebar widget, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really after is to copy the content to be pasted into the custom sidebar widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Screen.
Insert a new Text widget into your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your new widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure several commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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