In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you are going to conclude this step-by-step tutorial series by configuring 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:
Add An RSS Widget To Your Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to your sidebar.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(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 an optional widget title, type it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you want to show on your sidebar navigation menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the feed item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that best suits your needs.
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Now, let’s add a widget to display a tag list on your sidebar navigation menu.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags area)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s very little to configure. 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)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar area …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The Archives Widget In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological list and become less visible to blog users. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets site readers view earlier posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of default WordPress sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional things to know 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to the sidebar menu, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar section …
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 is using default widgets.
As soon as 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 your sidebar menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, WordPress lets you completely reorder how content displays in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the site’s sidebar section 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 your site’s visitor 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), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once accessibility mode 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 displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the widget, with dropdown menus that let you specify 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 click Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for changing its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back 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 …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Create Your Own 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 by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create your own sidebar widgets, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to show on your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar navigation section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar navigation area, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really after is the content to paste into a widget.
After writing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside your editor window and copy it 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar navigation section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
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