In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you are going to learn how to complete this tutorial series 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 An RSS Widget
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 active area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to your widget, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select how many items you would like to display in the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to show the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that best suits your needs.
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar)
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Section
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display a list of tags on your sidebar.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags area …
(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 is not much to set up here. 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 the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget configured to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your blog visitors to access dated posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to set up. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on sidebar area)
Now that you know how to configure your default sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some additional features of 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t listed under the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to your sidebar area, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to any of the available widget areas …
This is because the above theme is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to show up in your sidebar area, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets will not appear in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you completely reorder how content displays in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help 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 around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can 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), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
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 WordPress dashboard and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch 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 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 its settings, selecting the widget location, plus dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, 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 the selected widget with options for modifying 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 remove the widget from the Active Widgets area …
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 when you install new plugins on your website.
Here is an easy way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to add to the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are after is the content HTML so we can paste it into a widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Area.
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 is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now