In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you are going to complete this tutorial series 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:
Adding An RSS Widget To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add An RSS 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 sidebar area …
(WordPress RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Enter the RSS feed URL here.
- Feed Title: If you want to add an optional title to the widget, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you want to display on your sidebar navigation section from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box if you would like to show the feed item content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you want to display the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that suits your preferences best.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS widget configured with additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud To Your WordPress Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar that will display tags.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is not much to set up here. 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 finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation area …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress widget.
As you publish 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 blog readers access your previously published posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is very little to set up. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your default sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using 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 showing up on your site’s sidebar that aren’t showing up in your active sidebar inside 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 inside the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme is using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your new widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up in the sidebar area, 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 the default widgets won’t appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the order of elements in the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can rearrange your sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience.
If, however, 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 work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag and drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress administration area and navigate to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch 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 displays the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the widget, plus drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “6”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to go back to your previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for editing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and 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 & drop function to your Widgets …
(Switch off accessibility mode)
Create Your Own 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 area by plugins that you install on your website.
If you want to create your own custom sidebar widgets, then here is an easy way:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to show on the sidebar navigation area…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we need is to copy the code of the content so we can paste it into the custom widget.
Once you have created your content in the WordPress post editor, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Screen.
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 is now added to the sidebar navigation menu…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure WordPress sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum