In Part One of this step-by-step tutorial, we explained how to use widgets in WordPress and in Part 2, we explained how to configure text widgets.
In Part Three, we began configuring a number of WordPress blog widgets.
In this final installment, we explain how to complete the step-by-step tutorial series by configuring a few more commonly-used 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 Section
Let’s now add a widget to display news items on your sidebar.
To add the widget, select 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 RSS feed URL into this section.
- Feed Title: If you want to add a title to the widget, type it into this field.
- Items to display: Choose how many RSS feed items you would like to show in your sidebar from this drop-down menu.
- Display item content: Check this box to show the RSS feed content.
- Display item author: Tick this box to display the item item author.
- Display item date: Check this box to display the RSS feed item date.
(WordPress RSS Widget settings)
Experiment with different settings to find the ideal combination for your blog.
The example below shows an RSS Feed widget configured with the settings shown above …
(WordPress RSS Widget 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:
Adding A Tag Cloud
Now, let’s add A Tag Cloud widget to the sidebar.
Tags appearing in your widget are listed in the Tags section …
(WordPress Tags area)
To insert the widget, find a Tag Cloud widget in the Available Widgets section and drag it to the sidebar area …
(Tag Cloud Widget)
There’s really not much to set up in this widget. 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 the sidebar …
(Tag cloud displaying WordPress post tags)
The example below shows an Tag Cloud widget set for showing Categories instead of Tags …
(Tag cloud set to display WordPress post categories)
To learn more about using post tags in WordPress, see this tutorial:
Configuring The WordPress Archives Section In Your Sidebar
To complete this tutorial, we’ll configure the Archives Widget, which is another common WordPress widget.
As you publish new posts in WordPress, your older posts begin to get pushed further down the chronological ladder and become less visible to visitors. Your content is still there, it’s just not as visible.
The Archives Widget lets visitors access WordPress posts that you may have published some months ago …
(Archives Widget)
There’s really very little to set up. You can add a title, and choose whether to display items in your sidebar area as a dropdown menu, and display the number of posts . Click Save when finished …
(Archives Widget settings)
The screenshot below shows a published Archives widget set up to display posts as a dropdown menu with number of posts checkbox enabled …
(WordPress Archives Widget on sidebar area)
Now that you know how to configure most of the commonly-used widgets on your WordPress site, let’s explore some other areas 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:
Overriding Default Sidebar Widgets
If you see widgets displaying on your site’s sidebar section that aren’t listed under the active sidebar in your Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because some themes will display their own default set of widgets unless you add widgets to your sidebar.
For example, the site below shows some widgets in the sidebar area …
If you look in the Widgets area, however, you will see that no widgets have been added to the active widget areas …
This theme is using default widgets.
Once you add one or more widgets to an available widget area, the other widgets will your selected widgets will be used instead.
Note: If you want nothing to appear in your sidebar, either use a theme page template without a widgets layout or just add a blank Text widget to the sidebar.
Add a blank text widget to a widget area …
And the default widgets will not appear in your sidebar/footer section …
Widget Accessibility Mode
As we’ve shown you previously, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorganize how information displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the site’s sidebar menu by switching around the search and testimonial sections. This is easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
You can rearrange your sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use the drag & drop function to move widgets around (e.g. using a mobile device that doesn’t support dragging-and-dropping), then you can still use widgets if you enable Accessibility Mode.
Enable Widget Accessibility Mode
Enabling Accessibility Mode, via the Screen Options, allows you to use Add and Edit buttons instead of dragging and dropping.
To enable Accessibility Mode, log into your dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
(WordPress Widgets Menu)
Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of your screen …
(WordPress Widgets – Screen Options)
Click on Enable accessibility mode …
(Enable 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 links respectively …
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 a widget location, and dropdown menus for specifying the position of the widget in your widget location (e.g. position “1”, “3”, “4”, 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 displays the selected widget with options for editing the widget’s settings.
Click Save Widget to return to the Active Widgets section, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the Active Widgets area …
Click on Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to go back to using drag and drop …
(Turn off accessibility mode)
Creating Your Own Custom Sidebar Widgets – A Simple 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 widget:
First, create a new Post and enter the content that you want to show on your sidebar…
Make sure that any images you plan to use are resized to fit the maximum width of the sidebar section. Also, keep in mind that you don’t have a lot of room to add content on your sidebar navigation area, so keep your information concise.
Also, don’t worry about publishing your Post – all we really need is to copy the code of the content to paste into the sidebar widget.
To get the content code, click on the Text tab …
Select and copy everything to your clipboard…
Next, go into your Widgets Area.
Insert a new Text widget into your sidebar, paste the content from your clipboard into the content field and click Save …
Your new widget is now added to your sidebar area…
(Create your own sidebar widgets)
Congratulations! Now you know how to use and configure a number of WordPress sidebar widgets.
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