In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various default WordPress blog widgets.
In this final section, you are going to complete this tutorial by configuring a few more useful 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
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar navigation menu that displays news items from An RSS feed.
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 title to the feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items you would like to display in your sidebar navigation menu from the 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 want to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your site.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar navigation area)
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 To The WordPress Sidebar Menu
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar area.
Tags displayed in your widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags area)
To use the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is very little to configure. 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 done …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget set to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a common widget.
As you publish new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to site users. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your site readers to view WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets, let’s explore some other aspects 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 Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to the sidebar.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look inside the Widgets section, 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 active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to display in the sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar navigation area.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets will not appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, WordPress lets you quickly rearrange how information is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the site’s sidebar section 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 with widgets to improve your site’s visitor 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), then you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate 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 accessibility mode has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit links respectively …
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 widget location, and drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to return to the 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 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-and-drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own 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 area when you install new plugins on your website.
If you want to create your own custom sidebar widget, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display on the sidebar menu…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar area. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on your blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really want is to copy the content so we can paste it into the sidebar widget.
After writing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 new widget is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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