In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various frequently-used sidebar widgets.
In this final installment, we are going to conclude the tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-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:
Adding A Newsfeed Section
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar that displays news updates from RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to the feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items to display on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to display the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to 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:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget To Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to display a list of tags on the sidebar navigation menu.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags area)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when done …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to site visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your visitors to view older published WordPress posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is very little to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget configured to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used widgets, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful features of 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 appearing on your site’s sidebar navigation menu that aren’t listed under your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
This is because the above theme could be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar, 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 won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly reorganize how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily change the widgets in the site’s sidebar menu 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.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve visitor 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), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch On 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 link respectively …
If you 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 the widget location, with dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to go back to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for changing the widget’s 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)
Creating Your Own Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
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 a new plugin on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put 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 paste into the custom widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 new widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress 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