In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring various widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, we show you how to complete the step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-used 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:
Adding A Newsfeed Section
Let’s add a widget to display news items on the sidebar menu.
To add the widget, find 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: Paste the URL of your RSS feed here.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget title, enter it here.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you want to display on the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box if you want to show the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you would like to show the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that suits your preferences best.
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured as per the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To Your Sidebar
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar menu that displays a list of tags.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags section …
(Tags area)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really 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 …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows an Tag Cloud widget set up for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure The WordPress Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a frequently-used widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronology ladder and become less visible to blog visitors. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your visitors access WordPress posts that you may have published a while ago …
(Archives Widget)
There is not much to set up here. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar in a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful things to know 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:
How To Override Default WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets showing up on your blog sidebar navigation area that aren’t listed 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.
For example, this site displays some widgets in the sidebar …
If you look inside the Widgets area, however, you may find that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you don’t want anything to show up 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.
Just add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you earlier, WordPress lets you easily and quickly rearrange how content displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the layout in the site’s sidebar area by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help improve visitor experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag & drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Widget Accessibility Mode
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 WordPress dashboard and go to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On accessibility mode)
Once the feature has been enabled, the widgets in the Available Widgets and the Active Widgets sections, widgets will display an Add and Edit links respectively …
If you 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 a location to add the widget, and dropdown 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 click Cancel to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
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 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 area when you install new plugins on your website.
Here is a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to add to the sidebar area…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on the blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really after is to copy the content so we can paste it into the custom widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 widget will be added to your sidebar menu…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your 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