In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we are going to complete the tutorial by configuring a few more frequently-used WordPress 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 Section
Let’s add a widget to the sidebar navigation menu that will display RSS feeds.
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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to the widget, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many items you want to display on your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Section To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to display clickable tags on the sidebar area.
Tags displayed in the widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(WordPress Tags area)
To use the widget, select 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 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar navigation section …
(Tag cloud displaying post tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your readers view WordPress posts that you may have published months ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget set to show posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure your sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed in your active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar area.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, no widgets have actually been added to the available widget areas …
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 disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation menu.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorganize how content displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widget elements in the site’s sidebar area by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use the drag & drop function to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still work with 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 & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress administration area and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Turn 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 link respectively …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen opens up the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting the widget location, plus dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to go back to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to delete 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 …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets
Most of the widgets that you will use 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 simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to display in your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is to copy the code of the content to paste into the custom widget.
After composing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Screen.
Insert a new Text widget into your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your new custom widget will be added to your sidebar navigation area…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure sidebar widgets.
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