There are so many great things about using the WordPress CMS platform for building and growing a business online. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout with no programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and manage various types of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
This article explains how WP widgets work, why widgets are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to add functionality to your web site.
About WordPress Widgets: A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For Website Owners
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
Widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or menu item to your site.
The WordPress application is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you need to learn how to script PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds like geek speak. As will soon see, WP widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
With widgets, you don’t have to know how to program PHP or manipulate PHP code to enhance the functionality of your site.
(WP widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove content sections to certain parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure 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 additional components you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- nested list of pages
- content categories
- blog post archive
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- recent comments
- advertising
- testimonials
- poll results
- RSS content excerpts
- customers login section
- image galleries
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we provide detailed information about WordPress plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these add new functionality to WordPress and even drastically alter the look and feel of your website.
As you will soon discover, themes affect how widgets work on your web site and many plugins also install accompanying widgets that will fine-tune your website’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas on your site where widgets can show.
Typically, this is going to be in your theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be located in your site’s header section, footer, and even below the content area.
It all depends on what theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WordPress themes provide only one widget area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme above, and you can see that this particular WordPress theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of different widget areas …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widget sections)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas this specific theme includes …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets 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 themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets area log into your administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets area in your browser window …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets section displays 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 & 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 on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
In a default WordPress installation, 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all from your Widgets area using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
Using drag-and-drop lets you easily reorder 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:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your site)
Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in their active widget bar …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in your site’s 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 graphic button (2) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Easy, huh?
Here are a few more useful things about WordPress widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending on the actual theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize and manage your 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 the live website.
You can do many edits to widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is done 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!)
The ability to manage widgets from within your own dashboard 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 before publishing it (and avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the site’s sidebar menu 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.
Rearrange sidebar layout 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 your website’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add features like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, a blog post archive section, menus that display only selected pages, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying clickable images, user testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS feed content, image galleries, social media buttons, 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 give you little to no customization)
Many widgets offer various settings that allow you to further customize them. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets offer configuration options!)
Using Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP 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 great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use different types of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of great tips on how to get 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 new WordPress user, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress CMS platform 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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