In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of commonly-used WordPress blog widgets.
In this final section, we are going to complete the tutorial series by learning how to configure 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:
Add An RSS Widget
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
To add the widget, select 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 URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of items you would like to show on your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best works for you.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar that displays a tag list.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags screen …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar navigation section …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a frequently-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 your readers to view older posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to configure in this widget. You can add a 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 done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know about WordPress 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 blog sidebar navigation area that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in 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 widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
The theme above may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and be replaced with the selected widgets instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Just 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, WordPress lets you easily rearrange how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the site’s sidebar area 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.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve user 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), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(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 will display the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a location to add the widget, plus drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets screen, 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 go back to using drag & drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create 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 by plugins that you install on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation area. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on your sidebar section, 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 so we can paste it into the custom sidebar widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress post editor, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Area.
Insert a new Text widget into your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your custom widget is now added to your sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure sidebar widgets.
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