As we have discussed in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing WordPress is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, and rearrange your site’s layout without having coding skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily add, remove, and reorganize content from your website’s sidebar area (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) like:
- nested list of pages
- site categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- recent comments
- advertising banners
- testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- registration box
- videos
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial we show you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use WordPress Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before we explain how to configure widgets, it helps to first review some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar navigation menu, header area, and footer. Depending on your theme, widgets can also appear in the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see the “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used to perform their function 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 website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove widgets using simple drag and drop inside your Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reorder the order and layout of your theme’s widget-ready layout using drag-and-drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
If we could peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the back-end widget area …
Let’s now rearrange the order of these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar navigation area …
This instantly reorganizes the layout of the sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation menu, and the support section (2) is now placed above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar Menu
Deleting widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(Search widget)
To remove an active widget, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(How to delete WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove a widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always restore widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This can include things like 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.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the widget’s settings …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Previewing Widgets
Depending on which theme you use, you’re also able to customize widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before committing anything to your website or blog.
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 changes (and avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the back-end.
You can do many modifications and adjustments to the widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly applied and made visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since the theme you use can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar navigation area.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to configure a number of commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial about how to use Widgets.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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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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