There are loads of great benefits to choosing the WordPress web publishing tool for building and managing a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout without having web programming skills or knowledge.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and control various blocks of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this blog post you will learn how WordPress widgets work, why they are ideal tools for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to grow your web site.
WordPress Widgets – What Do They Do? Understanding WordPress Widgets For Beginners
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WordPress widgets are small modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or menu item to your 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 write code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds too technical. As will soon discover, widgets are made for non-technical users.
Widgets eliminate the need to know how to program or manipulate PHP code in order to enhance their website.
(WP widgets help you manage many features and functions on your site without having to edit code)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove features in areas of your website without touching any underlying code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display 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 functionality you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- website page list
- categories
- archived blog post entries
- custom menus
- links to resources
- most popular posts
- comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS content
- subscription form
- video galleries
- social media share buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes add loads of new features to WordPress and alter the design of your website or blog.
As you will see shortly, WP themes can affect how widgets display on your website and some plugins also come with accompanying widgets that will fine tune your website or blog’s capabilities.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added to.
Typically, functions controlled by widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be located in the site’s header, footer, even below or above your content.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WP theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes have only a single widget enabled section)
Below is the widget screen of the above theme, where you can see that this WordPress theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below includes multiple widget areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users multiple widgetized sections)
Here is the widget section of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas this specific theme includes …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets 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)
How Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets area is located inside the WordPress admin area and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets area in your browser window …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets screen displays 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 made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become activated for use on your site.
In addition, your Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets retain 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new plugins are installed on your site, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them in your Widgets section using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Using drag and drop technology lets you easily rearrange the order and layout of your site’s widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside this 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 the site’s active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty cool stuff, huh?
Here are some more useful things worth keeping in mind when using widgets:
Widget Management – Preview Widgets
Depending upon the actual WP theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage and customize 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 your live website.
You can do many edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting 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’ve done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from within your dashboard 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 (and avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly reorder how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the site’s sidebar by switching around 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.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s visitor 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 the site’s templates to rearrange the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add features like a page index, or a dropdown menu of your blog post categories, a blog post archive section, custom menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest excerpts of comments added to your posts, a section displaying clickable ads, quotations or survey questions & results, RSS content excerpts, image galleries, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Many widgets offer a number of settings that allow you to further configure these. This can include things like 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 offer customization!)
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 web 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 great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus many useful 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have 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 or blog please click on links to visit 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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