As discussed in this article, there are lots of great benefits in choosing WordPress for building and managing your digital presence. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site, and rearrange the layout of your site without programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange content on your blog’s sidebar navigation area (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on the site) 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 theme you have installed) like:
- nested page lists
- blog post categories
- archived published posts
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- recent comments
- clickable ad banners
- user testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- shopping cart forms
- video thumbnails
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use WordPress Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s explain some of the basics of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas in the theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also show up inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-ready sections)
These widgetized layouts correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag & drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active.
In addition, the Widgets area 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 With Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets with drag & drop in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder the layout of your widget-enabled layout by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- 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 the order certain features appear on your site)
If we were to peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the back-end widget section …
Let’s now change the order the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping some things around …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar menu …
As you can see, this immediately changes the layout of your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar, and the support image button (2) is now located above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The Sidebar Navigation Area
Deleting widgets from the sidebar menu is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar area …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting a WP widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove your widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar navigation area. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets offer a number of settings that allow you to further customize your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget toggles between expanding and collapsing the item and displays the widget’s settings …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no configurable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizing options)
Previewing Widgets
Depending on the theme you have installed on your site, you’re also able to preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before making any permanent changes to your website.
Widget management is a great 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 prior to publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do plenty of things in preview mode (like inserting, removing 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 instantly become available on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved the changes, the new configuration will automatically show on your site.
Because the theme you choose can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you complete this tutorial (one to work in and one to see your site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial.
To view Part 2, click this link:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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