In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part Two, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, 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 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
Let’s now add An RSS widget to the sidebar menu.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your sidebar area …
(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 would like to add an optional widget title, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of RSS feed items to show in the sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to display the feed item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that best suits your needs.
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured with the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget on sidebar)
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Add A Tag Cloud To Your WordPress Sidebar Menu
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar menu that will display a tag cloud.
Tags displayed in the widget can be found in the Tags screen …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget)
There is really very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in the tag cloud using Tags or Categories. Click Save when finished …
(Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress post tags)
The screenshot below shows the Tag Cloud widget configured to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Section In Your Sidebar Section
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a commonly-used WordPress widget.
As you continue publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to move further away from public view. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows your site readers to access previously published WordPress posts …
(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 your sidebar in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure various widgets in WordPress, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar area that aren’t listed under the active sidebar inside the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to the sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme could be using default widgets.
Once 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 no widgets to display in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t show in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily rearrange how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned 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.
You can rearrange your sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience.
If, for some reason, 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), then you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Accessibility Mode For Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via your Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Enable 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 link respectively …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen opens up the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting a location to add the widget, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for changing its settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets section, 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 restore the drag-and-drop functionality to your Widgets …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
How To Create Your Own Sidebar Widgets – An Easy Cheat
Most widgets will either be installed by default when you create a new WordPress site, or be automatically added to your Available Widgets section when you install new plugins on your site.
If you want to create your own custom sidebar widget, then here is a simple and easy way:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on your sidebar area…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation menu. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on the sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really after is the content HTML so we can paste it into a sidebar widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress post editor, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything inside your 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 custom widget will be added to your sidebar area…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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