In Part 1 of this tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure a text widget.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of default widgets in WordPress.
In this final installment, we are going to complete the tutorial by configuring 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:
Adding A Newsfeed
Let’s add a widget to the 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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to the feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many items you would like to show on your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the feed item content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box if you want to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for your website.
The screenshot below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar navigation menu)
The example below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using additional options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud Section To The Sidebar Navigation Menu
Now, let’s add a widget to display a tag list on the sidebar.
Tags appearing in the Tag Cloud widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(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 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 done …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar navigation menu …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post tags)
The example below shows a published Tag Cloud widget configured for displaying Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud displaying post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your WordPress Archives Section
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the default Archives Widget, which is a common WordPress widget.
As you continue publishing 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 allows your site readers to access WordPress posts that you may have published months ago …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There is really not much to configure in this widget. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget set up for showing posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure default WordPress sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful features of 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar that aren’t showing up under your active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, unless you add widgets to the sidebar section, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows a couple of widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look inside the Widgets section, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This is because the theme above may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the placeholder widgets will disappear and the widgets you want added will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to display in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not show in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you earlier, WordPress lets you easily reorganize how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have change the widgets in the site’s sidebar menu 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.
You can rearrange your sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets around using drag and drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and go to the Widgets section …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your 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 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 opens up the selected widget with options for customizing the widget’s settings, selecting the widget location, with dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in the selected area (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays the selected widget with options for editing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back to the Active Widgets section, 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 restore the drag-and-drop function to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
How To Create 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 section by plugins that you install on your website.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to display in the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your blog sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are looking for is the code of the content to paste into the custom widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside your editor window and copy it 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 custom widget is now added to the sidebar section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure various sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum