In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various frequently-used sidebar widgets.
In this final section, you are going to how to complete this tutorial series by configuring a few more commonly-used 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 The WordPress Blog Sidebar
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 RSS feed URL into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a widget title, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you would like to show in the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box 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 the RSS widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar navigation section)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Section
Let’s add a widget to the sidebar navigation area that displays a tag list.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags area)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much to set up. 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 the sidebar …
(Tag cloud displaying tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used widget.
As you publish new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological list and become less visible to site visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets readers view WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget configured for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional things to know about using 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:
Overriding Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar navigation section that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until 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 section, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above is obviously using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added 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 layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar menu.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can easily reorganize how content displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the sidebar 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.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag-and-drop (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 the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
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 …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch 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 …
If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the widget location, and drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for changing 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 area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag and drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own 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 section when you install new plugins on your website.
If you want to create a sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to add to your sidebar navigation section…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is to copy the content to be pasted into a sidebar widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside the editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 custom widget is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various 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