In Part One of this tutorial, we explained how to use WordPress widgets and in Part 2, we explained how to configure a text widget.
In Part 3, we began configuring a number of commonly-used widgets.
In this final installment, you are going to conclude this tutorial series by configuring 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 A Newsfeed Section To The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Let’s now add a widget to the sidebar that displays RSS feeds.
To add the widget, find 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: Enter the URL of your RSS feed into this field.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a widget title, enter it into this field.
- Items to display: Select how many RSS feed items to show on your 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: Check this box to show the RSS feed item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the item item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different widget settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The example below shows the RSS widget configured using the above settings …
(RSS Widget added to sidebar)
The example below shows a published RSS widget configured using other options selected …
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
To learn more about using RSS feeds in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Adding A Tag Cloud Section
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar navigation area.
Tags displayed in the Tag Cloud widget can be found in the Tags area …
(WordPress Tags area)
To add the widget, select a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to your active area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s 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 the sidebar menu …
(Tag Cloud widget set to display WordPress tags)
The screenshot below shows a published Tag Cloud widget set to show Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag Cloud widget displaying categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
How To Configure Your WordPress Archives Section In The Sidebar
To complete this tutorial series, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another commonly-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 users. Your posts are still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget allows readers to access older published posts …
(Archives Widget)
There is really very little to configure in this widget. You can add a title if you want, and choose whether to display items in the sidebar widget as a dropdown menu, and show the number of posts published each month . Click Save when done …
(WordPress Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget configured to show posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget displayed on blog sidebar)
Now that you know how to configure your widgets, let’s explore some other aspects of WordPress widgets.
Useful Widget Tips
Here are some additional features worth knowing about 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:
How To Override Default Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your blog sidebar area that aren’t showing up under the active sidebar inside your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets until you add widgets to the sidebar section.
For example, this site displays widgets in the sidebar …
If you look in the Widgets section, however, you could find that no widgets have actually been added to the active widget areas …
The above theme is probably using default widgets.
Once 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 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 the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And default widgets will not display in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily reorganize how content displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve user experience.
If, however, you find that you are unable to use drag & drop to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), you can still work with widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
How To Enable Accessibility Mode For WordPress Widgets
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of using drag & drop.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your administration area and navigate to Appearance > Widgets …
(Widgets Menu)
Select Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on the Enable accessibility mode link …
(Switch 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 its settings, selecting the location to add the widget, plus dropdown menus that let you specify the position of the widget in your selected location (e.g. position “1”, “2”, “5”, etc.) …
Click Save Widget to add the widget to the Active Widgets section, or Cancel to return to the previous screen …
Click on the Edit link of an active widget …
A screen displays your selected widget with options for modifying the widget’s 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)
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.
Here is a simple way to create your own sidebar widgets:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to display in your sidebar section…
Make sure that any images you 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 the sidebar, so try and keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about saving your Post – all we are really looking for is to copy the content to be pasted into a widget.
To get the content code, switch to the Text tab …
Select everything in your text editor window and copy it to your clipboard…
Next, 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 your sidebar…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of sidebar widgets.
Subscribe below & receive 101+ useful WordPress tips that will help grow your business online faster ...
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum