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 3, we began configuring various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, we explain how to complete 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 To The WordPress Sidebar
Let’s now add An RSS widget to your sidebar.
To add the widget, select 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 field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to your feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Choose how many feed items you want to display on the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the combination that suits your needs best.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The example below shows the RSS widget configured using additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Widget To Your Sidebar
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar that displays a tag cloud.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags area …
(Tags screen)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much to set up in this widget. You can add a widget title, 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 your sidebar navigation area …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your Archives Widget In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress widget.
As you continue 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 allows your visitors to view WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(Archives Widget)
There is really very little to set up here. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an 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 widgets, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional things to know about 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up in your active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to the sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
The above theme is using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar, 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 …
And default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have explained earlier, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorganize how content is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the layout in 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.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help 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), then you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
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 admin and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your 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 …
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 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 the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display your selected widget with options for editing the widget’s 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 …
(Turn off 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 when you install a new plugin on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to the sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar menu. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is the content HTML to be pasted into the custom sidebar widget.
Once you have created your content in the WordPress post editor, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 new custom widget will be added to your sidebar menu…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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