How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 4

Learn how to add and configure various useful WordPress widgets on your sidebar and how to create custom sidebar widgets …

How To Add And Configure Widgets In WordPressIn Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.

In Part Three, we began configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.

In this final installment, we are going to complete this tutorial series by configuring a few more useful WordPress sidebar widgets.

Info

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 - WordPress Widget Updates

(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

(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

(Image Widget)

Click on ‘Add Image’ …

Let's add an 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

(Select an image)

The image will automatically load into the widget area …

Image added to widget

(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

(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 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

(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

(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

(Copy image URL to your clipboard)

Go back to your image widget and click on ‘Replace Image’ …

Image Widget - 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

(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

(Save your new image)

The new image will now display on your sidebar …

New image added using WordPress image widget

(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

(Drag a Video widget to your sidebar)

Click the ‘Add Video’ button …

Video widget - Add Video

(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 video URL)

Add a title to the widget if desired and click ‘Save’ …

WordPress Video Widget - Save Button

(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

(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

(Add an audio widget to your sidebar)

Click the ‘Add Audio’ button…

WordPress Audio Widget - 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

(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

(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

(Audio file added to your site using the WordPress Audio Widget)

To learn more about adding audios to WordPress, see this tutorial:

Add A Newsfeed To The WordPress Sidebar

Let’s now add a widget to display news items on your sidebar.

To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …

WordPress RSS Widget

(WordPress RSS Widget)

Enter the following information into the widget settings:

  1. RSS feed URL: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
  2. Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, enter it into this section.
  3. Items to display: Select the number of items to show in the sidebar navigation menu from this drop-down menu.
  4. Display item content: Tick this box to show the RSS feed content.
  5. Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to display the item item author.
  6. Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to display the item item date.

WordPress RSS Widget settings

(RSS Widget settings)

Experiment with different options to find the combination that best suits your needs.

The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with the above settings …

RSS Widget on sidebar

(RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)

The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …

RSS Widget settings

(RSS Widget settings)

To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:

Add A Tag Cloud Section

Now, let’s add a widget to display a list of tags on your sidebar.

Important

Tags displayed in the widget are managed in the Tags section …

WordPress Tags area

(Tags screen)

To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …

WordPress Tag Cloud Widget

(Tag Cloud Widget)

There is really not much to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when done …

Tag Cloud Widget settings

(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)

Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …

Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags

(Tag cloud set to display WordPress post tags)

The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up to show Categories instead of Tags

Tag cloud set to display WordPress post categories

(Tag cloud displaying post categories)

To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:

Configure Your Archives Section In The Sidebar

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 chronology ladder and become less visible to readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.

The Archives Widget lets your blog readers view previously published posts …

WordPress Archives Widget

(Archives Widget)

There is really not much to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when finished …

Archives Widget settings

(WordPress Archives Widget settings)

The example below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …

Archives widget on sidebar

(Archives Widget added to sidebar)

Now that you know how to configure various default WordPress sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.

Useful Widget Tips

Here are some useful 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

(Jetpack Widgets)

It also adds a useful ‘Visibility’ function to all WordPress widgets …

Jetpack adds 'Visibility' to all 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

(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 showing up on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in your 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 widgets in the sidebar …

How To Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets

If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to the available widget areas …

How To Override Default Widgets

This is because the theme above is probably using default widgets.

Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.

Note: If you want no widgets to appear in your sidebar navigation section, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.

Add a blank text widget to a widget area …

Overriding Default Widgets

And default widgets will not display in the sidebar/footer section …

Override Default Widgets

Widget Accessibility Mode

As we have explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly reorder how information displays in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …

Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience

(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)

In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the order of elements in 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.

Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help improve user experience.

If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag-and-drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.

Enabling Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets

Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.

To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin area and navigate to Appearance > Widgets

Widgets Menu

(WordPress Widgets Menu)

Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …

Widgets - Screen Options

(Widgets – Screen Options)

Click on Enable accessibility mode

Enable accessibility mode

(Enable 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 …

How To Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets

Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …

Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets

A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a widget location, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …

Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets

Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to your previous screen …

Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets

Click on the Edit link of an active widget …

Enabling Widget Accessibility Mode

A screen displays the selected widget with options for modifying the widget’s settings.

Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to delete the widget from the Active Widgets section …

Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets

Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag and drop function to your Widgets …

Turn off accessibility mode

(Disable accessibility mode)

Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – A Simple 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 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 want to add to your sidebar navigation section…

Create Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets

Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar navigation area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar area, so keep your information concise.

Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are looking for is to copy the content HTML so we can paste it into the custom sidebar widget.

After creating your content, click on the Text tab …

Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets

Select everything inside the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…

Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets

Next, 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

Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets

Your new widget is now added to your sidebar navigation section…

Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets

(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)

Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various WordPress sidebar widgets.

How To Add And Configure Widgets In The WordPress Sidebar Section

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