In Part 1 of this tutorial series, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, you learned how to configure text widgets.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of sidebar widgets in WordPress.
In this final section, you are going to complete this tutorial by configuring a few more useful 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 An RSS Widget
Let’s add An RSS widget to the sidebar area.
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: Paste the RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you would like to add a widget feed, enter it into this section.
- Items to display: Select the number of items you want to show on the sidebar navigation section from the drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Tick this box to show the item content.
- Display item author: Check this box if you want to display the feed item item author.
- Display item date: Tick this box to display the feed item item date.
(RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different options to find the ideal combination for your website.
The example below shows the RSS Feed widget configured using the settings shown above …
(RSS Widget on sidebar section)
The screenshot below shows the RSS 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 Section
Let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to display clickable tags on the sidebar menu.
Tags displayed in your Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags panel …
(Tags area)
To use 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 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 finished …
(WordPress Tag Cloud Widget settings)
Your Tag cloud will now display on your sidebar …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying post tags)
The example below shows the Tag Cloud widget set up to display Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configure Your Archives Section In The Blog Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is a common widget.
As you keep publishing new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to users. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets your blog readers access older published WordPress posts …
(WordPress Archives Widget)
There’s very little to configure. You can add a widget title, and choose whether to display items in the Archives widget in a dropdown menu, and display post counts . Click Save when done …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows the Archives widget set up for displaying posts as a dropdown menu with post counts checkbox enabled …
(Archives Widget on sidebar section)
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 additional 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:
Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets appearing on your blog sidebar navigation section that aren’t showing up 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 some widgets in the blog sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, no widgets have been added to any of the active widget areas …
This theme may be using default widgets.
As soon as you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will disappear and be replaced with the selected widgets instead.
Note: If you want no widgets to display in the sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar section.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets won’t show in the sidebar/footer section …
Accessibility Mode
As we have explained previously, WordPress lets you quickly and easily rearrange how information is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the layout in the site’s sidebar 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 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), you can still work with widgets by enabling Accessibility Mode.
Enabling Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, lets you use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag-and-drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your admin and go to the Widgets section …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click link to enable accessibility mode …
(Switch On 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 the widget location, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in the widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to your Active Widgets section, or the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …
Click on an active widget’s Edit link …
A screen will display the selected widget with options for modifying its settings.
Click Save Widget to 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 and drop …
(Disable accessibility mode)
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 new plugins on your site.
Here is an easy way to create your own sidebar widget:
First, create a new Post and type in the content that you would like to add to the sidebar…
Make sure that any images you use fit the maximum width of your sidebar navigation area. Also, keep in mind that there’s no a lot of room to put content on your sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we need is to copy the code of the content so we can paste it into your sidebar widget.
Once you have composed your content in the WordPress post editor, click on the Text tab …
Select everything inside the 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 custom widget is now added to the sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure sidebar widgets.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now