There are lots of great things about choosing the WordPress CMS platform to manage and grow a digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout without code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and control various types of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this blog post you will learn what WP widgets are, why they can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help to supercharge your web site.
WP Widgets: Understanding WordPress Widgets For Business Website Users
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a self-contained block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a text box or item to your WP site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you have to learn how to write code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to discover, WP widgets are perfect for non-techie users.
WordPress widgets help you control many features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding.
(Widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and remove content sections to certain areas of your website without having to touch 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 many features you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WP widgets:
- website page list
- post categories
- archived posts
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- advertisements
- testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed content
- registration box
- video galleries
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we write more extensively about WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how these can easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even change the look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will learn in just a moment, WordPress themes can affect where widgets work on your web site and a number of plugins also come with accompanying widgets that can extend your website’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas on your site where widgets can be added to.
Usually, widgets can be found in the sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in the site’s header area, in the footer area, even below or above the content section.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes only have a single widgetized section)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the above theme, so you can see that this particular theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see, the only area where users can add widgets to their site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of widget-ready areas …
(Many WP themes offer users multiple widget areas)
Here is the widget screen of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas this particular theme includes …
(Multiple WordPress widget 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 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets area can be accessed inside the WordPress administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active and can be used on your site.
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 pre-configured settings.
By default, your site already comes with several 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 Recent Posts, Archives, Meta, etc. to your site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new plugins are installed on your site, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all in your Widgets area just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
With drag-and-drop you can easily reorder the order of your widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
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 their corresponding widgets have been arranged in their active widget bar …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging & 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 the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the order of items in your 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 opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Here are some more things worth knowing about WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending on the actual theme that you have installed, you can also manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing your 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 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 it (and avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily and quickly rearrange how information displays in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the widgets in the site’s sidebar menu by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to 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 many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the site’s templates to rearrange the layout, customize features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add useful features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archive section, menus, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertising banners, quotations or surveys & polls, content from RSS feeds, images, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
Most widgets offer various settings that allow you to further configure these. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets provide users with configurable options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As we have just 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 detailed tutorials showing you how to use a number of different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus many great 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 a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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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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