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 Three, we began configuring various sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we are going to conclude this step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-used WordPress 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
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to display news items on your sidebar menu.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(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, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of items to display in the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your site.
The example below shows the RSS widget configured using the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar area)
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s not much to set up. 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag cloud displaying tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up to show 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:
Configure The Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology list and become less visible to site users. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets visitors view WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure most of the frequently-used widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know about using 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 Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar that aren’t showing up in your 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 the sidebar menu.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme is obviously using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorganize 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-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the site’s sidebar area by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can rearrange your sidebar layout using widgets to improve user 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), you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress dashboard and go to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Enable accessibility mode)
Once the feature 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 will display the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the widget location, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to go back to the 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 update your settings and 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)
Creating Your Own Custom 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 when you install a new plugin on your site.
If you want to create your own custom sidebar widgets, then here is a really simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to add to your sidebar…
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 blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we need is to copy the code of the content to paste into a sidebar widget.
After writing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 custom widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various WordPress sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com