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 Three, we began configuring various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, we explain how to complete this tutorial series by configuring a few more useful 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 To The Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to display news items on your sidebar.
To add the widget, select 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: Paste the RSS feed URL into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you would like to display in your sidebar section from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you want to show 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 show the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows an 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
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display tags on the sidebar menu.
Tags displayed in your widget are managed in the Tags area …
(Tags screen)
To use the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really not much to set up in this widget. You can add a title, 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 …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your WordPress Archives Widget
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to site users. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets visitors view less visible content …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really not much to configure. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful features worth knowing about WordPress 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 Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar section that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have actually been added to any of the active widget areas …
This is because the theme above may 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 want nothing to appear in the sidebar navigation menu, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar navigation area.
Add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly reorder how content is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the site’s sidebar menu 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 elements using widgets can help 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), you can still use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(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 …
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 location to add the widget, and dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to return to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays the 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 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
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 a simple way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to display on the sidebar navigation menu…
Ensure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar area. 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 publishing your Post – all we are looking for is the content to be pasted into a sidebar widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in the text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 widget is now added to your sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your sidebar widgets.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)