Widget Content Blocks

Description

WYSIWYG Widgets or rich text widgets

This plugin adds so called “Widget Blocks” to your website which you can easily display in your widget areas.

You can create or edit the widget blocks just like you would edit any post or page, with all the default WordPress editing functions enabled. This way, you can use the visual editor that comes with WordPress to format your widgets. You can even use media uploading to insert images and so forth.

Features:

Create beautiful widgets without having to write HTML code
Easily insert media into your widget content
Add headings, lists, blockquotes and other HTML elements to your widgets using the WordPress classic editor
Use WP Links dialog to easily link to any of your pages or posts from a widget
Use shortcodes inside your widgets
Have a revision history of your widget content
Translation ready

Translations

Is the plugin not translated into your language? You can contribute your translations using the translation editor here on WordPress.org.

Source code

The source code of this plugin is available on GitHub: ibericode/wysiwyg-widgets.

About the plugin author

Danny van Kooten has been building WordPress plugins since 2010, starting with WordPress 3.0.

He is the founder of ibericode, the small software company behind popular WordPress plugins including Mailchimp for WordPress and Koko Analytics.

Installation

Upload the contents of wysiwyg-widgets.zip to your plugins directory.
Activate the plugin
Create a Widget Block by going to Widget Blocks > Add New
Go to Appearance > Widgets, drag the WYSIWYG Widget to one of your widget areas and select which Widget Block to display.
(Optional) Go to the front-end of your website and enjoy your beautiful widget.

Screenshots

Use the widget in one of your widget areas to show a widget block.
Edit the content of a WYSIWYG Widget just like you are used to edit posts.
Overview of created Widget Blocks.
Widget Blocks in the admin menu.

Faq

What does this plugin do?

This plugin creates a custom post type called “Widget Blocks” so you can create widget content just like you would create posts or pages. You can show these “Widget Blocks” by dragging a “WYSIWYG Widget” widget to one of your widget areas and selecting which widget block to display inside it.

Where do I create a Widget Block?

The plugin adds a menu to the Pages menu item. Just go to Pages > Widget Blocks and start creating beautiful widgets.

What does WYSIWYG mean?

What You See Is What You Get

Can I switch between ‘Visual’ and ‘HTML’ mode with this plugin?

Yes, all the default options that you are used to from the post editor are available for the widget editor.

Will this plugin help me create widgets with images and links

Yes.

Reviews

Excellent

By (wappie) on April 7, 2024

Just works exactly how you'd like it to work.

And.. easy to work with for editors, because they don't have to deal with the widgets section to make a change, it's just like editing a post.

Thanks a lot!

Works

By aerta on January 13, 2023

Brilliant plugin.

Exactly what I needed.

By nullmem on October 9, 2017

I needed a WYSIWYG editor for widgets for my clients but needed a way to keep them from accidentally deleting the widget along with all the content. This is perfect implementation, thank you to the developer.

A Lifesaver

By jssilver on September 8, 2017

I used this to create a custom link widget - the default link widget just didn't work for me. But I can see that Widget Content Blocks can be used to solve many widget problems. Highly recommended.

Works great with Elementor

By tageins on August 22, 2017

I use this plugin together with the Elementor page builder, and it works great. The advantage is, that my customers can edit their texts without bothering with the elementor UI, instead just use the usual editor. This is great!

Awesome!

By jberg1 on May 15, 2017

It makes it so easy to have WYSIWYG editable widgets and also use the blocks in my custom templates.

An essential plugin

By thewoosh on March 7, 2017

This is an absolutely essential plugin that I have used for many years. It should be part of WordPress Core. Get it - it's a no-brainer

Works Wonderfully!

By Christina (carasmo) on March 6, 2017

This is such a great way to create widget content!

تشکر Thank

By afshink on December 14, 2016

این عالیییییییییه This is great

Works well

By Tribulant Software (contrid) on November 16, 2016

It does what it says and works well. Great reusable widgets for multiple sidebars in WordPress.

Changelog

2.3.13 – June 23, 2026

Fix: Some HTML elements being escaped despite user having unfiltered_html capability.

2.3.12 – June 19, 2026

Added: Revision history support for Widget Blocks.
Improved: Escaping and sanitization of widget output and admin text.
Improved: Updated plugin copy, links, tags, PHP requirement, and WordPress compatibility information.
Improved: Added PHP syntax checks, PHPStan, PHPCS, WordPress coding standards, and GitHub Actions workflows.
Improved: The release build now runs checks first and excludes development files from the package.

2.3.11 – February 27, 2026

Version bump – this plugin is still working fine!

2.3.10 – Feb 5, 2024

Version bump just to get rid of the “unmaintained” warning.

2.3.9 – November 11, 2019

Updated WordPress compatibility.

View the full changelog on GitHub