In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, you are going to complete the tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-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:
Add An RSS Widget
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar navigation menu that will display news items from RSS feeds.
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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of items to show on the sidebar navigation menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that suits your preferences best.
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured as per the above settings …
(RSS Widget on sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS 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 To The WordPress Sidebar
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar navigation area.
Tags appearing in your widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(Tags screen)
To use the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new posts to 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 lets blog readers view previously published WordPress posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional ways to use 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:
Override Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed under the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar area.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to the available widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to display in the sidebar section, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly reorder 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 …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar 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 rearrange your sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag & 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 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 go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(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 its settings, selecting the widget location, plus drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and return to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to remove 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 …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create 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 by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create a sidebar widget, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to show on the sidebar area…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we really want is the content HTML to be pasted into the custom sidebar widget.
After composing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside the editor window and copy it 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 new custom widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
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