In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring various commonly-used widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to complete this tutorial by configuring a few more commonly-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 A Newsfeed Section
Let’s now add An RSS widget to the sidebar navigation section.
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: Enter the RSS feed URL into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to the feed, type it here.
- Items to display: Choose how many items you would like to display on the sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to display the item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that best works for you.
The example below shows the RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS widget configured using other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Section To The Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add A Tag Cloud widget to display a list of tags on your sidebar.
Tags appearing in your widget can be found in the Tags screen …
(WordPress 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 is really 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 the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure The Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to site visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your readers to access WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(Archives Widget)
There is not much to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar as a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget configured to display posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar navigation area)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets, let’s explore some other useful ways to use WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful things to know about using 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:
Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your site’s sidebar navigation section that aren’t listed in the 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 your sidebar area.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will find that no widgets have been added to the active widget areas …
This theme is probably using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to appear in the sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar navigation area.
Just add a blank text widget …
And default widgets won’t appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly and easily rearrange 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-and-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve visitor experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to drag-and-drop widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
How To 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 administration area and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on 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 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 the widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the widget, plus drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for modifying 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 area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag-and-drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom 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 area by plugins that you install on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we really want is to copy the code of the content to be pasted into your sidebar widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
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