There are so many benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform for building and managing your business online. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout without requiring web programming skills and knowledge.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, remove, and reconfigure various types of content from your site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This post explains how WP widgets work, what widgets do and how widgets can be used to expand the functionality of your site.
What Do WordPress Widgets Do? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For New Users
(WordPress widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
Widgets are small modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a script or item to your website or blog.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you need to learn how to script web code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds too geeky. As will soon learn, WP widgets are perfect for non-techie website owners.
Widgets eliminate the need to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code to enhance the functionality of their site.
(WordPress widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without having to touch code)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete blocks of code in areas of your site without touching any code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your theme on ”widgetized” areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the features you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar section (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WordPress widgets:
- website page list
- blog post categories
- archived blog post entries
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- user comments
- text ads
- user testimonials
- survey questions & results
- RSS content
- member login section
- video
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide an overview of WordPress plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add new functionality to WordPress and even drastically alter the design of your website.
As you will soon learn, themes affect how widgets display on your website and some plugins also add accompanying widgets that will improve your website or blog’s features.
Widgetized Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections on your site where widgets can appear.
Normally, widget-driven functions can be found in your sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be in the header, in the footer, and even above or below the content area.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WordPress themes provide only one widget-ready area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, and you can see that this theme only includes one widgetized area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below contains a number of different widget-ready areas …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, where you can see how many widget areas are included in the theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two 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)
Where Can I See My WP Widgets?
To access the Widgets area log into your admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets screen in your browser window …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
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 on your website. 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 in the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to your visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new plugins are installed on your website, you may find that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all inside your Widgets area just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
Drag-and-drop lets you easily rearrange the layout of your widget-enabled sections.
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 click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
If you take a peek inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they were arranged in their active widget bar …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty cool, huh?
Let’s go over some more useful things worth knowing about widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending on the actual WP theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to your live website.
You can do several modifications and adjustments in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and moving around 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’ve 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!)
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 prior to publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly reorganize how information displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily change the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganize sidebar layout using 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 static websites, you would need to edit code in the web templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add things like a list of your web pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, an archives section, custom menus, links to external sites, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying advertising, testimonials or surveys, RSS feed content, product catalog images, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing 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 configuration options)
Many widgets offer various settings that allow you to further customize your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets offer customizable options!)
How To Use WordPress Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website, plus many great tips for getting the most benefit 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress website management software please see other posts we have published on this site.
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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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