In Part One 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 commonly-used widgets.
In this final section, you will complete the step-by-step tutorial by learning how to configure a few more useful 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 An RSS Widget
Let’s add a widget to your sidebar navigation section that will display RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find 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 URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add an optional widget feed, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you want to show on the sidebar navigation section from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box if you would like to display the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Check this box to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you want to display the RSS feed item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that best suits your preferences.
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured using the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured with some of the other options selected …
(RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud To The WordPress Sidebar
Now, let’s add a widget to your sidebar that will display a tag cloud.
Tags appearing in your Tag Cloud widget are listed in the Tags screen …
(WordPress Tags screen)
To use the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s not much to set up. You can add a widget title, 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 your sidebar navigation area …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring Your WordPress Archives Widget In The Blog Sidebar
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 ladder and become less visible to site readers. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets readers access earlier posts …
(Archives Widget)
There’s very little to set up here. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget in a dropdown menu, and show post counts . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The example below shows an Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget added to blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure a number of sidebar widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in 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, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar section …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you could find that no widgets have actually been added to any of the available widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
Once 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 want nothing to display in the sidebar section, 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 to a widget area …
And the default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we have shown you previously, WordPress lets you completely rearrange how content displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the site’s sidebar menu 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 reorganize your sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag-and-drop (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via 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 Enable accessibility mode …
(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 link respectively …
Click on a Widget’s Add link in the Available Widgets section …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for customizing its settings, selecting a location to add the widget, with drop-down menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or click Cancel to return to your previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for editing its settings.
Click Save Widget to update your settings and go back to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to delete the widget from the Active Widgets section …
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
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 when you install a new plugin on your website.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you would like to display on the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of the sidebar. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on the sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we are looking for is to copy the content to be pasted into a widget.
Once you have written your content in the WordPress editor, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside your text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Now, go into your Widgets Screen.
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 the sidebar section…
(Create your own custom sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)