In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various default WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to complete this tutorial by configuring a few more frequently-used 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 A Newsfeed Section
Let’s now add An RSS widget to your sidebar area.
To add the widget, find 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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional widget feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you would like to display in the sidebar menu from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you want to display the feed item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that best works for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget on sidebar navigation area)
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Section
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar that displays clickable tags.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags area …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is very little to configure 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 the sidebar area …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your WordPress Archives Section
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to blog visitors. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows readers to view previously published WordPress posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to set up in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful 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:
Override Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed in your active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar navigation section, 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, no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
As soon as 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 want no widgets to appear in your sidebar menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly reorganize how content displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the site’s sidebar section by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve user experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use the drag & 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 if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
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 dashboard and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the widget location, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets screen, 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-and-drop …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – A Simple Cheat
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 new plugins on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar menu. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we want is to copy the content so we can paste it into a widget.
After writing your content, 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 custom widget is now added to the 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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