In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of commonly-used widgets.
In this final section, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial series by learning how to configure 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 To Your Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to display news items on the sidebar menu.
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 RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to the feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose how many items to show on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar navigation section.
Tags appearing in your widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little to configure in this widget. You can add a 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 navigation area …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another common widget.
As you publish new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to users. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows blog readers to access WordPress posts that you may have published some time ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s not much to set up here. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful features worth knowing about 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 Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar navigation area that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you will see 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 available widget area, the other widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar section.
Just add a blank text widget …
And default widgets will not appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, WordPress lets you completely reorder how information displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the sidebar by switching around 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 your site’s user experience.
If, however, 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), you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your 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 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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the widget location, plus dropdown menus for specifying 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 click the Cancel button to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to 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 go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
Most widgets 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.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display in your sidebar area…
Make sure 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 the sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we really need is to copy the content HTML so we can paste it into the custom sidebar widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to 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 widget is now added to your sidebar navigation menu…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure the most commonly-used sidebar widgets.
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