In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of default blog widgets.
In this final section, you are going to complete this step-by-step tutorial 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:
Add A Newsfeed
Now, let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar navigation section.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional title to your widget, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of feed items to show on the sidebar navigation area from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best suits your preferences.
The example below shows the RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar navigation menu)
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Section To The WordPress Sidebar
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar menu that displays clickable tags.
Tags displayed in the widget are managed in the Tags area …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really 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 done …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar navigation section …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set 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:
Configuring Your Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another common 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 lets your blog visitors access WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to set up in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional ways to use 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar navigation section that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar in the 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 a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
The above theme may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and be replaced with your selected widgets instead.
Note: If you want nothing to show up in your sidebar section, 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 default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can easily and quickly rearrange how information is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the widgets in the site’s sidebar by switching around 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 elements using widgets can help improve visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use drag & drop to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin area and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(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 …
If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the widget, with drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for editing 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 remove the widget from the Active Widgets area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own Custom 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 section by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create a sidebar widget, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to show on your sidebar menu…
Ensure 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 keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really want is the code of the content so we can paste it into the sidebar widget.
After creating your content, switch to the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, 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 widget is now added to the sidebar area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure sidebar widgets.
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