How to add an image to your sidebar

There are several plugins out there that make it easy to add an image to your sidebar.  But they’re pretty unnecessary.  Adding an image to your sidebar only takes one little tiny line of code.  You can just copy and paste it and then add your image.  No plugin required.  I’ll walk you through it in the video, or you can read the step-by-step below.

Here’s how to add a picture to your sidebar:

1. In your WordPress dashboard, hover over Appearance and click Customize.
2. Click on Widgets, then click whichever sidebar you want to add it to (there may be one, or there may be several, it depends on your theme).
3. Towards the bottom, click “Add new,” then scroll down the list of widgets to “Text.”  Click that.
4. Your text box will pop up to the left.  In that box, paste this code:    <img src="">
5. Now in another tab, open your WordPress dashboard again, and upload the photo you want to use.  Open the image you just uploaded.
6. Right click on the image and select “Copy Image Address”
7. Go back to your tab where we added the code and right click between the two quotation marks.  Click paste.

Your image should be showing in your sidebar now!  You can also add text above or below your image just by typing normally.

It’s also a really good idea to optimize your image first (essentially, don’t upload a GIANT image that you’re going to put in the tiny spot in your sidebar).  Read more about image optimization here.