In Part One of this 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 commonly-used widgets.
In this final section, we will conclude this step-by-step tutorial series by learning how to configure a few more frequently-used WordPress sidebar 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 a widget to your sidebar that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, select 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: Paste the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to your feed, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of RSS feed items to display in your sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the feed item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best works for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud To Your WordPress Sidebar
Now, let’s add a widget to the sidebar that will display a tag list.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are managed 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 sidebar …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There is very little to set up here. You can add a widget title, 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 your sidebar menu …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget In Your Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new posts to 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 blog readers view WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really not much 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 display post counts . Click Save when finished …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other areas of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful features worth knowing 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:
Overriding Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar navigation menu that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to the sidebar navigation section.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have been added to any of the available widget areas …
The above theme is obviously using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and be replaced with your newly-added widgets instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, WordPress lets you quickly reorganize how information is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the sidebar menu 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 layout with widgets can help improve user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use drag-and-drop to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Turn on 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 …
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 a widget location, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your selected area (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for changing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets screen, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the Active Widgets section …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag-and-drop function to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – A Simple 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 section by plugins that you install on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to display in your sidebar menu…
Ensure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar area. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are after is to copy the content to paste into the sidebar widget.
After writing your content, click on the Text tab …
Select everything in your text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 will be added to your sidebar menu…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of 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