In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring 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:
Adding An RSS Widget
Let’s now add An RSS widget to your sidebar section.
To add the widget, select 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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to your feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items you would like to show in the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you would like to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on blog sidebar)
The example below shows the 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 your sidebar that displays a tag list.
Tags displayed in the widget can be found in the Tags area …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s not much to configure 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 done …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget set to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget In The Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a common widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows readers to access WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional 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 that aren’t listed under your active sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to the sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will find that no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme is using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout 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 display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, WordPress lets you easily and quickly rearrange how information displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, 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 layout in the site’s sidebar menu 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.
You can rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to drag and drop widgets around (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 WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and navigate to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on 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 its settings, selecting a location to add the widget, with dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget 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 an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for modifying the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back to the Active Widgets section, 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 restore the drag and drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets
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.
If you want to create your own sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display in your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the sidebar area, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really need is to copy the content so we can paste it into your sidebar widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Area.
Add a new Text widget to your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your new custom widget is now added to the sidebar navigation section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure several commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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