In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, 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 a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to conclude this tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-used WordPress 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
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to your sidebar.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional widget title, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of RSS feed items you want to display in your sidebar area from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you would like to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you want to show the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best suits your preferences.
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Section To Your Sidebar Area
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s 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 finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up 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 The WordPress Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used 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 allows readers to access WordPress posts that you may have published months ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s not much to configure. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the commonly-used widgets, let’s explore some other useful things about using WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful features worth knowing about 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 blog sidebar that aren’t listed in the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This theme is probably using default widgets.
Once 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 area, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar menu.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorder 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 …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the 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 rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor 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 use widgets if you enable 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 and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(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 …
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 widget location, plus dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for editing 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 section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag-and-drop function to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom 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 when you install new plugins on your website.
If you want to create your own custom sidebar widgets, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display on the sidebar menu…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we really need is to copy the content HTML to be pasted into your sidebar widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, 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 area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
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