In Part One of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of default WordPress widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to learn how to complete the step-by-step tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-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
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar menu that displays RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget title, enter it here.
- Items to display: Choose the number of RSS feed items to display on your sidebar menu from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you want to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that suits your needs best.
The screenshot below shows a published RSS widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Widget
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar menu that will display a tag list.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to configure in this widget. 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 navigation menu …
(Tag cloud displaying post tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Section
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological list and become less visible to blog visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets visitors view less visible WordPress posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to set up here. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget added to sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of WordPress widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional 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:
Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar navigation menu, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, this site displays widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have actually been added to the available widget areas …
This theme is using default widgets.
Once 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 nothing to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar navigation section.
Just add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained earlier, with WordPress you can quickly reorganize how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the sidebar menu by switching around 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 your site’s visitor 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 if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting a location to add the widget, and drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel 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 modifying its 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 …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
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 area when you install new plugins on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to show on your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to 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 navigation menu, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is the code of the content to be pasted into your widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside your editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 new custom widget will be added to your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
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