There are many great benefits to choosing WordPress to build and grow a website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and rearrange the layout of your site without web programming skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and reconfigure various blocks of content in your site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this post you will learn what WordPress widgets are, why they are ideal for non-technical users and how widgets can be used to help you expand the functionality of your website.
Widgets – How Do They Work? An Introduction To Widgets For Business Website Users
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
WP widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a script or menu item to your WordPress site.
The WordPress software is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions to a website, you have to learn how to script PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As you are about to see, widgets are made for non-technical users.
Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without the need to touch code.
(Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget allows you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove content sections to parts of your WordPress site without touching any underlying 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 functionality you can add to your site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WP widgets:
- site pages
- site categories
- archived blog post entries
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- post comments
- text ads
- testimonials
- poll questions & results
- content from RSS feeds
- subscription form
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide more detailed explanations of WP plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add loads of new functionality to WordPress and even alter the entire look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will learn in a moment, themes can affect how widgets display on your web site and many plugins also add accompanying widgets that can enhance your website’s functionality.
Widgetized Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Typically, this is going to be in the sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be in the site’s header area, in the footer section, and even below or above your content section.
It all depends on what theme you have installed on your site.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area adding items to the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes provide only one widget-ready section)
Below is the widget panel of the above theme, where you can see that this particular WP theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains various widgetized areas …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget-ready areas)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets panel is found within your WordPress administration area and can easily be accessed from the WordPress dashboard menu by clicking on Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that can be used on your site.
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 sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and can be used on your site.
The Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
In a default WordPress installation, 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 in your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to your visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new WordPress plugins are installed on your website, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets section …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all within your Widgets section using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)
Using drag and drop lets you easily reconfigure the order and layout of your website’s widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the site’s active widget bar …
Let’s now change the order these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the layout of the site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Here are a few other things worth knowing about WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Theme Customizer
Depending on the WordPress theme that you have installed on your site, you can also customize and manage 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 in preview mode, like adding, removing and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done 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.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from within your WP dashboard 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 manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly rearrange how information is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the sidebar area by switching around 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.
Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the website’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like user registration areas, or just add things like nested page lists, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, a blog post archive section, menus, links to external sites, links to your recent posts, the latest comments, a section displaying text ads, testimonials or polls & surveys, RSS content excerpts, images, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Most widgets offer a number of options that allow you to further customize things. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets offer configurable options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your web site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your site, plus many useful tips for getting the most out of WordPress using 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see our related posts section.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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