As we’ve discussed in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress web publishing application for building and managing a web site is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, and rearrange the layout of your website without the need to have web coding skills.
WordPress lets you easily insert, delete, and manage various types of content on your site’s sidebar (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the WordPress theme you have installed) like:
- nested list of pages
- blog categories
- archived content posts
- menus
- links to external sites
- most read posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- advertising banners
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- RSS feed content
- subscription form
- product images
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Twitter)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how they work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial series we will show you how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
The Basics
Before we get into configuring and using widgets, let’s go over some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar navigation menu, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can sometimes also be used inside the content area …
(Many WP themes provide multiple widget-ready sections)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets by dragging and dropping)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used to perform their function on your site.
The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag And Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside your Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your WordPress site)
If we look inside this site’s Widget area, you will see that these features appear on the site in the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar navigation menu, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete your WP widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove a widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar navigation menu. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further configure things. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access to registered users), displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the widget’s settings …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets provide users with little to no customizing options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
Widget Previews
Depending upon the WordPress theme you have installed on your site, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before committing anything live to your site.
Widget management is a valuable feature of WordPress. You can work in preview mode inside the WordPress Theme Customizer screen (Appearance > Customize) and see how your widget content will appear before publishing any changes (to avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do a number of things to the widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and it will all be done in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly applied and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved your changes, the new settings will automatically be displayed on your site.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how your site is coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial about using WordPress widgets.
Click here to keep reading:
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