How To Add An Image To The WordPress Sidebar?
Sidebars are an integral part of your website design. The amount of vital information, advertisements or product previews you can place them can impact your website’s viewer reception quite a lot. Similarly, Images placed on your sidebar can serve various purposes and are quite versatile. Thus, your website can benefit from a lot if you were able to insert relevant images in sidebar widgets.
However, users might find themselves at a loss trying to enable this function. We can’t expect everyone to be a tech-savvy, not when the WordPress industry has become this huge encompassing pool of various kinds of content makers, designers and bloggers.
As so, Beautiful Themes presents you with this detailed guide made to help you add an image to WordPress sidebar using WordPress image widgets.
In this tutorial, we will provide you with two different methods to insert images onto the sidebar:
1. Using the default WordPress Image Widget
By default, WordPress provides you with a native Image widget to place images onto your sidebar. Thus, by using the default image widget, we can enable sidebar pictures and images. To place this widget on your sidebar simply click or hover over the Appearance listing on your WordPress dashboard. Then click on Widgets to open the widget management page.
Here on the column on the left, search for a widget named ‘Image.’ Once you find it, click on it and then click on Sidebar on the options provided. Then click on Add Widget to insert the widget onto the sidebar.
Now click on the Image widget that has been added to the sidebar on the right. Here you can insert the Image’s title and upload an Image from your website’s Gallery.
Simply click on the Image section that may say “No image selected” to insert the image and once you have the image selected click on Add Image. Once the image has been added and the Title has been set, click on Done to set up the image widget.
As an additional reminder, you can also arrange the Widgets on the sidebar widgets as well. Simply drag your image widget or any other widget to the required location. You can learn more about WordPress widgets and how to manage them here.
2. Adding Images to the sidebar using a WordPress Plugin:
While placing an Image on the sidebar using the native method is quite easy, you can streamline the process even more by using dedicated plugins. These plugins can be extremely easy to use and do not require any HTML code understanding to customize. For this tutorial we will be using the Image Widget plugin as it provides tons of cool features while still remaining user-friendly.
So first, you need to install the Plugin to start. To learn how to do so, consider reading this article that explains how to install WordPress plugins.
Once you’ve activated and installed the plugin, go the Appearance>>Widgets and under the Available Widgets, look for Image Widget.
Select it and pick the position for your image. After that, click on the Add Widget button.
Once you do that, you should be able to see Image Widget towards the right. Click on it, and then click on ‘Select an Image’. From here, you can pick the image you want from your Media Library or Upload a new one. Once that is done, click on ‘Insert into Widget’.
Now you can play around with the options for the image. Just scroll down and you will be able to enter the title, alternative text and the caption.
Underneath that, you have the option to turn the image into a link. You can also use the drop-down list to set whether or not the link opens in a new tab or not. Finally, you can change the size of the image along with its alignment. Once everything is to your liking, click on Save and you’re set.
Now you should be able to see your image in the sidebar of your site.
If you want a detailed video tutorial on this, click on the video below.
Concluding:
Thus by using the default Image widget or using designated Third-party plugins, you add images to WordPress sidebars. Remember that these images might require some editing and modifications to fit your sidebars. Consider the appropriate size for the images and optimize them for better results.
Similarly, if you want to learn more about WordPress widgets and add more nifty elements to your website, check out some of our other articles:
- How to add a Print button to your WordPress website
- Beginner’s guide to turning the WordPress header into an image slideshow
- How to add Social Media Icons to WordPress
