In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, we are going to conclude this step-by-step tutorial by learning how to configure 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:
Adding A Newsfeed To Your Sidebar
Let’s now add An RSS widget to display news items on the sidebar.
To add the widget, select 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 here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to the widget, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items to show on the sidebar navigation menu from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your website.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured using other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud
Let’s now add a widget to the sidebar navigation menu that will display clickable tags.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags area …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is 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 finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar menu …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your WordPress Archives Section In The Sidebar Menu
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 ladder and become less visible to blog visitors. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your blog readers to access dated content …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really very little to set up. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget set up for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
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:
Overriding Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar navigation section that aren’t showing up in your 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 your sidebar section.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above may be 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 don’t want anything to appear in the sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the layout in the sidebar area 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.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, 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 Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and go to the Widgets section …
(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 …
(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 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 selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for editing 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 restore the drag-and-drop function to your Widgets …
(Disable accessibility mode)
How To 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 section by plugins that you install on your site.
If you want to create a sidebar widget, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display on the sidebar navigation menu…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are after is to copy the content HTML to paste into a sidebar widget.
Once you have created your content in the WordPress editor, click on the Text tab …
Select everything in the text 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 new widget is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure several frequently-used sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum