As we have explained in this article, there are so many great things about choosing WordPress to build and manage a business online. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, or rearrange the layout of your website without web programming skills or knowledge required.
WordPress lets you easily insert, remove, and manage various blocks of content from your site’s sidebar navigation menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) 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 your theme) like:
- page lists
- site categories
- post archives
- menus
- links to external sites
- most read posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- image banners
- customer testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS content
- newsletter subscription form
- video thumbnails
- social media buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s functionality, see this article:
In this tutorial series we will show you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using Widgets In WordPress
What You Need To Know First
Before we explain how to configure widgets, let’s explain some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar section, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also be found below or above the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide multiple widgetized sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active on your site.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets using drag & drop inside your Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the layout of your theme’s widget-ready sections using drag-and-drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the backend widget area …
If we change the order the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation area, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar navigation area is very easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always restore widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to toggle between expanding and collapsing the item …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
Customize Widgets Section
Depending upon the WP theme you are using, you can also manage and customize widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before committing anything live to your website or blog.
The ability to manage widgets inside the WordPress dashboard 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 (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do plenty of things to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and everything is done in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will then be instantly applied and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once the changes have been saved, WordPress will automatically update the widget settings and display your new changes to your site visitors.
Because the theme you choose determines how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how your changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to configure a number of commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial about using Widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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