In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring various default WordPress widgets.
In this final section, we 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:
Add A Newsfeed
Let’s now add a widget to the sidebar that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(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 want to add an optional title to your feed, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Select how many items you would like to show in your sidebar menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to show the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To The Sidebar
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to display tags on your sidebar section.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To add the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much to configure. 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 …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you publish new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology list and become less visible to visitors. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your visitors view WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really not much to configure. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional features worth knowing about 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 displaying on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to your sidebar menu, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
This is because the above theme may be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to display in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar area.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, with WordPress you can completely reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widget elements in the site’s 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.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag and drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag and drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin 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 …
(Turn 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 …
If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting a location to add the widget, with dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, 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 changing the widget’s 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 area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag & drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Sidebar Widgets
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 website.
If you want to create your own custom sidebar widgets, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to show on the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is to copy the content so we can paste it into a sidebar widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
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 …
Your new widget is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
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