There are so many great things about choosing WordPress for managing and growing your website. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site and rearrange the layout of your site with no coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, delete, and control various types of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this article you will learn what widgets are, what makes widgets so useful and how widgets can help you to grow your web site.
Widgets – What Do They Do? Understanding Widgets For Business Website Users
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WordPress widgets are small modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a script or item to your WP site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to program code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds like geek speak. As will soon discover, widgets are perfect for non-techie users.
Widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without having to mess with code.
(WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove features to parts of your WordPress site without touching any code, and
- Rearrange how various elements display on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the many cool things you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WordPress widgets:
- index of pages
- site categories
- archives
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- clickable images
- customer testimonials
- surveys
- RSS content excerpts
- shopping cart information
- product catalog images
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we write more extensively about plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new functionality to WordPress and change the look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will soon learn, themes can affect how widgets work on your site and many plugins also add accompanying widgets that can help further fine tune your website’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled areas in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Typically, features powered by widgets can be found in your sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be located in your site’s header section, the footer area, even below or above the content section.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some themes only provide a single widget area)
Here is the widget screen of the above theme, where you can see that this specific theme only includes one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes various widget-ready areas …
(Many WP themes offer users multiple widget-ready areas)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WP theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)
Where Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become activated for use on your site.
The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets (e.g. widgets for displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …) and active widgets.
These widgets are available right out of the box in the default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets display in your Widgets section as new WordPress plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all in your Widgets area using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Drag-and-drop lets you easily reconfigure the layout and order of your widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If you were to peek inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in their active widget area …
If we change the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar …
This instantly reorganizes the layout of the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Here are some more useful things about using widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending upon the actual theme that you have installed, you’re also able to customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing any changes to your live website.
You can do several edits and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
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 (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily rearrange how information is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the layout in the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most static websites, you would need to edit code in the web templates to rearrange the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add other features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your blog post categories, an archives section, custom page menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying advertisements, customer testimonials or surveys, RSS content, images, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no customizable options)
Most widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further customize your site features. 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. and more …
(Many widgets offer configuration options!)
Using WordPress Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of cool tips on how to get the most benefit out of WordPress with widgets:
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 1
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 2
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 4
Related Posts
If you are a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please see other posts we have published on this site.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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