In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, we are going to conclude this step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more commonly-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 To Your WordPress Sidebar Menu
Let’s add An RSS widget to the 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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional title to the feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of feed items you want to display in your sidebar section from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to show the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best works for you.
The example below shows an RSS widget configured using the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar section)
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:
Add A Tag Cloud To Your WordPress Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to display tags on the sidebar section.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags area …
(Tags area)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is 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 …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in 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 lets your readers view less visible posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s really not much to set up. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful things to know 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:
Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar navigation section that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays a couple of 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 …
This is because the above theme could be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to appear in the sidebar section, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar area.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, WordPress lets you easily reorder how content displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching around 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 rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to drag & drop 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.
Enabling Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(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 will display the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the location to add the widget, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for modifying 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 …
(Disable accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Custom 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 area by plugins that you install on your site.
If you want to create a sidebar widgets, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display on your sidebar navigation section…
Make sure that any images you plan to 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 section, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really looking for is to copy the content to paste into the sidebar widget.
To get the content code, switch to 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 custom widget is now added to your sidebar menu…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure sidebar widgets.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum