In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various frequently-used blog widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to complete the tutorial series by configuring 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 To Your WordPress Sidebar Section
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation menu that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select 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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to the widget, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of RSS feed items to show on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check 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.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured with the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows an RSS 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
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation menu that displays a list of tags.
Tags displayed in the widget are listed in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is not much to set up here. 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 …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar navigation section …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your WordPress Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets visitors access WordPress posts that you may have published months ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s not much to configure in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget configured to show posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional features of 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar area that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you could find that no widgets have actually been added to any of the available widget areas …
The above theme is using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to display in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily and quickly rearrange how information is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the layout in the site’s sidebar menu 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 elements using widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use the drag-and-drop function to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin 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 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 displays the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the location to add the widget, plus dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, 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 an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for changing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets section, 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 go back to using drag and drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Sidebar Widgets
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 custom sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to show on the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your sidebar navigation area, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is to copy the code of the content to be pasted into the sidebar widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select everything in your editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Area.
Add a new Text widget to your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your new widget is now added to your sidebar navigation section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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