In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you are going to conclude this tutorial by configuring 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:
Adding A Newsfeed Section
Let’s add a widget to display news items on the sidebar.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose the number of feed items to display on the sidebar area from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to show the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured using additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To The Sidebar
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar section that will display clickable tags.
Tags displayed in your widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(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’s really very little to set up here. 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 …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget set to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological list and become less visible to readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows visitors to access older published WordPress posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is not much to set up here. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful things to know about using 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:
How To Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in your 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 blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will find that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This is because the theme above is using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with the selected widgets instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to appear in the sidebar navigation menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not display in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily reorganize how content displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the layout in the sidebar menu by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can reorganize your sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use drag & drop to move 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.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Enable accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit links respectively …
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, with drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display 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 delete the widget from the Active Widgets section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag and drop function to your Widgets …
(Disable 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 section 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 add to the sidebar…
Ensure 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 blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is to copy the code of the content so we can paste it into the sidebar widget.
After creating your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Screen.
Add a new Text widget to your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your custom widget will be added to your sidebar area…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now