14 WordPress Widgets to Display Special Content on Sidebar

The WordPress widgets are different from WordPress plugins and the users often confuse one with another. In a nutshell, the plugins can extend the frontend or backend functionalities of a WordPress site and some plugins increase both functionalities. On the other hand, the widgets work in combination with website’s theme and are used to add fresh content to the front-end such as a search bar or Twitter feed. The WordPress software includes many The WordPress widgets allow a web-developer to exponentially increase the capabilities of WordPress websites. The empty sidebars and footers on these websites stay reserved for these widgets. of these widgets; however, the users may need to install the plugins to access some specific widgets. There are many WordPress widgets capable of increasing the user-interaction in a website’s sidebar while being available at nominal expense.

Recent Posts

It is a default WordPress widget capable of displaying the currently viewed content in the website’s sidebar. This widget comes with many additional features. These features can display vital information about the posts, excerpts or thumbnails. They also have the capacity to extend categories. The users may even hide the recent posts from a list or show the date of posting on the sidebar with the thumbnail feature of Recent Posts widget. This thumbnail feature can perform many essential tasks to increase a website’s capability.

Category Posts

The customizable features of Category Posts widget allow the users to display the current posts from a specific category. The users can utilize this widget to display the recent posts in desirable formats. They can use it to post the titles in a listed fashion or to display the thumbnails and/or excerpts. The users can hide this widget in the absence of current posts. They may even change the ‘Shortcode’ options using Customizer Posts widget.

Simple Social Icons

A WordPress website may have some icons on the sidebar to link the visitors to a variety of social profiles. The ‘Simple Social Icons’ widget allows users to customize these icons. They can select the type and the number of social media profiles they like to link to the website. The customization starts after the selection. They can customize the color, size, alignment or order of these link-enabling icons according to their desires with the help of this widget.

WordPress Popular Posts

If the users want to display the most popular posts on the blogs, then they need help of this widget. The ‘WordPress Popular Posts’ widget comes with a variety of features and is known for customizability. It can add multiple widgets to a web-page irrespective of their distinctive settings. This multi-widget capability is unavailable with any other WordPress widget. The users may utilize this widget to check the statistics of popular posts present on their websites. It may even apply time-range to a list of posts popular within a certain span of time. This widget is compatible with WordPress Multisite Support and WordPress Multilingual Plugin.

Enjoy Instagram

Everybody loves Instagram and it is one of the popular social networking apps of these days. The ‘Enjoy Instagram’ widget allows users to smoothly add Instagram posts onto their websites. They may add these posts with the Lightbox effect in the grid or carousel view. This widget can display the Instagram pictures with the attached ‘hash-tags’. The updated version of ‘Enjoy Instagram’ widget is called ‘Easy Instagram’. It has a ‘video visualization’ feature allowing users to post videos alongside the pictures. This latest version also includes additional mobile-friendly features with the touch-capability and the navigation buttons.

Instagram Feed

This useful widget can edit the appearance of an Instagram photo as per the users’ liking. This widget allows users to display photos from the non-private accounts on Instagram. The users may utilize this widget to display the photos from one or multiple accounts without any complication. They may even use this widget to adjust the photos’ width, height, spacing or background. There are several other editing features available with this WordPress widget.

Google Maps

The owners of WordPress websites may want to announce their locations to the visitors using a map. It takes only a few minutes to add a map to a web-page with ‘Google Maps’ widget. The ‘Google map’ available through this widget includes thumbnails and lightbox. The users may even change the Google map’s size, color and other features with a series of thumbnail options. This customizable widget enables interactive mapping and provides the satellite view alongside the roadway view. It comes with various zooming levels and languages. Its advance version comes with directions and has more than 1500 map-pins along with light/dark lightbox skin.

Social Count Plus

The follower-count allows the website-owners to display their credibility and followers’ loyalty. The ‘Social Count Plus’ widget helps the owners of WordPress websites in this regard. Its unique features can effortlessly display a website’s social media count on its sidebar. The users can display the numbers using a link/icon widget or a shortcode. The shortcode is used with pages or posts. This widget even updates the cached results daily or according to the latest posts on various social media platforms. The cache feature also prevents any collapse due to the popular social-media networks such as Facebook or Twitter.

YouTube Widget Responsive

An attractive video adds dynamism to a website’s appearance and increases its appeal to the viewers. This widget can insert a YouTube video into a website in desirable places. It uses a shortcode to perform this task and can insert the video into the sidebar. The users may even select the specific minutes/seconds for a video to start or end. The customization features available with this widget let the users edit the videos according to their necessities. They may mute the sound, conceal the title and perform many interesting alterations to YouTube videos with the help of this WordPress widget.

OptinMonster

If a website can convert its visitors into email subscribers, then it improves the website’s online ranking through maximal lead-generation. The OptinMonster widget uses advance analytics to track the users’ behavior on a website. It even displays targeted campaigns through popup windows before letting the users leaving a page. This widget includes A/B analytics to inform the users regarding the most effective headlines or content of any website.

SnapWidget

The SnapWidget can display any content from the social media platform automatically on any website. The users can easily embed videos/photos onto their websites with the help of this widget. They can collect these articles from Instagram, Facebook, Twitter or other networks. These useful features are available with free version of SnapWidget. The paid version includes many sophisticated features such as custom CSS functions or widget analytics.

Custom Taxonomies Menu Widget

The widgets attached to the WordPress module cannot display custom taxonomies on the sidebar. The users need to incorporate Custom Taxonomies Menu Widget for this type of display on the sidebar. The specific configuration of this widget allows users to select the includable or excludable taxonomies. It also enables the exclusion of terms inside the taxonomy.

Compact Archives

Every WordPress website comes with ‘Monthly Archives’ widget; however, this widget’s performance may slow down the users. This widget shows the archives in a long list of months. It is a time-consuming task for the users to scroll down an extended list and the list also occupies a lot of space. The ‘Compact Archives’ widget can combine the monthly archives into years and can display the archive in compact form by clearing the occupied space. This widget comes with an additional widget and the users may add this ancillary widget to the sidebar.

Authors Widget

This widget is useful for websites maintaining a web-page that contains blogs from multiple authors. It allows the users to display a list of authors’ names along with the links to their articles. The users may even utilize this widget to categorize authors’ names in different orders. It is also possible to display an article count or link to authors’ RSS feeds with the help of ‘Authors Widget’.

Conclusion

WordPress is an open-source CMS known to increase a website’s efficiency with its advance features. The WordPress widgets improve this level of efficiency with additional utilitarian features. They can effortlessly collect data from external sources, display static texts and connect the viewers to social media platforms. They even bring ease into the process of developing WordPress sites. These widgets are essential for the display of special content on the sidebar of WordPress sites and they include additional features for users’ benefits.