In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we explain 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 An RSS Widget To The WordPress Sidebar
Let’s add An RSS widget to display news items on the sidebar.
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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to your widget, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items you want to display in your sidebar menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to display the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to show the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that suits your needs best.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured using the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the 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:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display a list of tags on your sidebar.
Tags displayed in the widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
To use the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much to configure in this widget. 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 section …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your Archives Widget In Your Sidebar Navigation Section
To complete this tutorial, 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 lets your blog visitors view WordPress posts that you may have published some time ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really not much to set up in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured to show posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget 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:
How To Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to your sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to any of the active widget areas …
This is because the above theme is obviously using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to appear in your sidebar navigation area, 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’ve shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly reorganize how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by 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, however, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag & drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Widget Accessibility Mode
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 WordPress admin and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on 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 link respectively …
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 its settings, selecting the widget location, and drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to go back to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for modifying 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 restore the drag & drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Creating 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 when you install a new plugin on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display in the sidebar navigation menu…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar navigation section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really need is to copy the content HTML so we can paste it into a sidebar widget.
After writing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 custom widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.
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