In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete the tutorial by configuring a few more frequently-used 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 The Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation menu that will display news items from RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(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 an optional widget feed, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Select how many items to display on the sidebar area from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to display the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your website.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(RSS Widget on sidebar menu)
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud To Your WordPress Sidebar Section
Let’s add a widget to display clickable tags on your sidebar.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags section …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(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 finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar menu …
(Tag cloud displaying tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The WordPress Archives Section In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in 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 visitors to access WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to configure. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget configured to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful 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 displaying on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t listed 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 your sidebar.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to appear in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar navigation section.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorder how content is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use drag-and-drop to move widgets around (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 your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress administration area and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Turn on accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit link respectively …
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 a location to add the widget, and drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to return to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
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 remove the widget from the Active Widgets area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag & drop …
(Disable 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 area when you install a new plugin on your site.
If you want to create a custom sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we really need is the code of the content to paste into your widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Screen.
Add a new Text widget to 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 your WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now