In Part 1 of this step-by-step tutorial series, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part Two, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring various commonly-used widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to learn how to complete the tutorial series 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
Let’s now add An RSS widget to display news items on your sidebar menu.
To add the widget, select an RSS widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(RSS Widget)
Enter the following information into the widget settings:
- RSS feed URL: Paste the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to your feed, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you want to show on your sidebar from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you would like to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to show the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the combination that works best for you.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using other 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 add a widget to the sidebar that will display tags.
Tags appearing in the widget are managed in the Tags screen …
(Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much 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 …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar navigation area …
(Tag cloud set to display tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set up to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your Archives Widget In The Sidebar Menu
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another frequently-used WordPress widget.
As you continue adding new content to WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological list and become less visible to site readers. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your readers view WordPress posts that you may have published some months ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to set up in this widget. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows a published Archives widget set up to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on sidebar area)
Now that you know how to configure most of the commonly-used widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
WordPress Widgets – Useful Tips
Here are some useful 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 Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your site’s sidebar area 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 your sidebar menu, the theme will display its own default set of widgets.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
The above theme is 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 appear in your sidebar navigation menu, 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 default widgets will not show in your sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the site’s sidebar by switching 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 elements using widgets to improve your site’s user 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 work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets
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 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 …
(Turn on accessibility mode)
Once accessibility mode 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 …
If you 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, plus drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or click the Cancel button to go back to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for modifying 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 go back to using drag & drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets
Most widgets 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 a simple way to create your own custom sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar area, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are really looking for is to copy the content HTML so we can paste it into the custom widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress editor, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Now, 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 widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your WordPress sidebar widgets.
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