In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.
In this final section, we explain how to complete the step-by-step tutorial series 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
Let’s now add An RSS widget to display news items on your sidebar.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional widget title, enter it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you want to show in the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that suits your needs best.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar navigation menu)
The example below shows an RSS widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display a tag list on your sidebar.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To use the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s 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 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 widget set to display WordPress tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you publish 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 your readers to access older posts …
(Archives Widget)
There’s not much to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget configured for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful ways to use 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 blog sidebar menu that aren’t showing up in the 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 menu.
For example, this site displays widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the active widget areas …
The above theme could be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar navigation section, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar navigation menu.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets won’t appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can completely reorder how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the order of elements 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 layout using 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), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag and drop.
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 …
(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 its settings, selecting a widget location, and drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for modifying the widget’s 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 restore the drag and drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – A Simple Cheat
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 new plugins on your website.
If you want to create your own sidebar widget, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to display on the sidebar navigation section…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the sidebar navigation section, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really want is to copy the content HTML to paste into the custom sidebar widget.
After composing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside your editor window and copy it 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 is now added to your sidebar navigation section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
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