In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various frequently-used widgets.
In this final installment, we are going to complete the step-by-step tutorial series 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 that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(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 title to your widget, type it here.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you want to display in your sidebar area from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to display the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that works best for you.
The example below shows an RSS widget configured as per the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar that displays a list of tags.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(Tags screen)
To insert the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s not much 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 done …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar section …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used widget.
As you publish 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 lets your blog readers view less visible posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really not much to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with post counts 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 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 Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to your sidebar area.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This theme could be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will disappear and be replaced with the selected widgets 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 navigation section.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly and easily rearrange how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widget elements in the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s user 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 work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For 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 admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Enable 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 will display the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the widget location, with dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays 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 …
(Switch 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 by plugins that you install on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to add to the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation area. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to add content on the sidebar area, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really after is to copy the content to paste into your widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress editor, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 section…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum