In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of frequently-used WordPress blog widgets.
In this final section, you will complete the tutorial series by learning how to configure 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 An RSS Widget
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar 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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose the number of RSS feed items you want to display in the sidebar menu from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured with other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To The Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar area.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags section …
(Tags screen)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much to set up in this widget. 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 WordPress post tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up to show 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 Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common widget.
As you continue adding new posts to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology list and become less visible to blog readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your visitors view WordPress posts that you may have published months ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really not much to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget configured for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful 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:
Overriding Default Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar navigation section that aren’t listed in the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar area.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you may find that no widgets have actually been added to any of the available widget areas …
This theme is using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to display in the sidebar navigation menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you completely reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the sidebar section by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag & drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin area and navigate to the Widgets section …
(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 accessibility mode 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 displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a widget location, with drop-down menus that let you specify 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 go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back 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 …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Creating 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.
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 display on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really after is to copy the content to be pasted into the custom sidebar widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in your text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
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