There are so many benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform to build and manage your web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and reconfigure your site’s layout with no web coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and control various types of content from your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this blog post you will learn how widgets work, what they do and how widgets can help you to grow your website or blog.
What Is A WordPress Widget? An Overview Of Widgets For Business Website Users
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A widget is a self-contained block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a script or menu item to your WordPress site.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you have to know how to program code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, widgets are perfect for non-techie website owners.
WP widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without requiring knowledge of coding.
(WP widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without having to touch code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete features in certain areas of your 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 functionality you can add to your WP site’s sidebar area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WP widgets:
- nested page lists
- post categories
- archives
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- recent comments from users
- clickable text ads
- user testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed content
- opt-in subscription form
- image galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide additional content about plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add loads of new functionality to WordPress and change the entire look and feel of your site.
As you will soon discover, WordPress themes can affect where widgets display on your site and some plugins also add accompanying widgets that will help further fine-tune your site’s capabilities.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas on your site where widgets can be added.
Usually, functions managed by widgets can be found in the sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in your site’s header, in the footer area, sometimes even above or below the content.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WP themes only provide a single widgetized section)
Below is the widget section of the theme shown above, and you can see that this theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below contains multiple widgetized areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users multiple widget-enabled sections)
Here is the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific 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 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)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets screen is found within the WordPress admin area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
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 by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately active and available on your site.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured 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, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets appear in your Widgets section as new plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them within your Widgets area using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
With drag and drop you can easily reconfigure the order and 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 display:
- A subscription form,
- A contact 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 display)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now change the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(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 layout of your site’s 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 section (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Let me just show you some other things worth knowing about using widgets:
Widget Management – WP Theme Customizer
Depending upon the WP theme that you have installed on your site, you can also customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do a number of edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and reorganizing your current 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.
(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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorganize how content is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the sidebar menu 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.
Rearrange sidebar elements 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 traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your web templates to rearrange the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like a customers login section, or just add features like page lists, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, a post archives section, menus to display selected pages, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertising, testimonials or surveys, RSS content excerpts, video galleries, Twitter feeds, 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 customization)
Most widgets offer additional options that allow you to further customize them. 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 Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WordPress site 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 detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your site, plus lots of cool 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 a new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using the WP website management platform please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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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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