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 blog widgets.
In this final installment, we are going to complete the tutorial series by configuring a few more frequently-used WordPress 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 To Your Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to your sidebar navigation area that displays news updates from An RSS feed.
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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a title to the widget, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select the number of items to display on the sidebar section from this 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 if you would like to display the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box if you want to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the combination that suits your needs best.
The screenshot below shows an RSS widget configured with the above settings …
(WordPress RSS Widget displayed on sidebar)
The screenshot below shows a published RSS Feed widget configured using some of the other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to your sidebar area.
Tags displayed in your widget are managed in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
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 very little 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 finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on the sidebar section …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying tags)
The example below shows a published 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:
Configure Your Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the 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 lets site visitors access WordPress posts that you may have published a while back …
(Archives Widget)
There is really not much to configure. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar in a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows an Archives widget set for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure most of the commonly-used widgets, let’s explore some other useful aspects of using WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some useful ways to use WordPress 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 WordPress Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar menu that aren’t showing up in the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to your sidebar.
For example, this site displays a couple of widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the available widget areas …
This theme could be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an active widget area, the other widgets will your newly-added widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to appear in the sidebar navigation area, either use a theme page template without a widgets section or just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar.
Just add a blank text widget …
And the default widgets won’t display in the sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorganize how information is displayed in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the 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.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help improve user experience.
If, however, you find that you cannot move widgets using drag-and-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 your Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your WordPress admin area and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(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 …
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 drop-down menus that let you specify the position of the widget in the selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “4”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to go back to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen displays your 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 delete the widget from the Active Widgets area …
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 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 new plugins on your site.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you want to display in your sidebar…
Ensure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of your sidebar. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we want is the content so we can paste it into a widget.
After creating your content, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything 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 custom widget will be added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure your sidebar widgets.
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