Category: WordPress 101

There are lots of benefits to using the WordPress CMS platform to build and grow a website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and rearrange your site’s layout without code editing skills.

WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and control various types of content from your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.

(WP widgets)

This article explains how widgets work, why they are great tools for non-technical users and how widgets can help to improve the functionality of your site.

About WordPress Widgets: Understanding Widgets For New Users

(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)

A widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a script or list 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 have to know how to program web code.

Now … don’t worry if this all sounds like geek speak. As will soon discover, WordPress widgets are made for non-techies.

Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your site without the need to edit code.

(WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without requiring coding skills)

Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.

In simple terms, a widget lets you do things like:

• Easily add, edit and delete content sections to areas of your site 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 functions 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 WP widgets:

• page lists
• blog categories
• archive
• menus displaying only selected pages
• links to external sites
• links to recent posts
• excerpts of recent comments added to posts
• image banners
• testimonials
• polls & surveys
• RSS feed content
• opt-in form
• product catalog images
• Facebook feeds
• add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
• administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)

In other articles, we provide an overview of WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how these add new features to WordPress and even alter the look and feel of your site.

As you will learn in just a moment, WordPress themes can affect how widgets display on your site and some plugins include accompanying widgets that will further fine-tune your website’s features.

Widget-Ready Themes

Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can show.

Typically, widget-driven functions can be found in your sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in the site’s header, the footer section, and even below the content section.

It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site or blog.

For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar …

(Some themes only have one widget-ready section)

Here is the widget section of the above theme, where you can see that this particular WP theme only includes one widget area …

As you can see from the above, the only place where users can add widgets to their site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.

In contrast, the WordPress theme shown below includes various widget-ready areas …

(Many WordPress themes provide multiple widget areas)

Here is the widget panel of the theme shown above, where 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)

Where Do I Access My Widgets?

To use widgets, access the Widgets panel located inside your administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …

This brings you to the Widgets section in your web browser …

(Widgets Panel)

The Widgets area displays all the widgets you have available.

The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …

(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)

Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.

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, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.

In a default WordPress installation, 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 your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to site visitors …

(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)

Sometimes, new widgets get added to your Widgets area when new WP plugins are installed on your site …

(Installing WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)

Widgets Features: Drag And Drop

Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them in your Widgets section using drag and drop …

(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)

Drag & drop lets you easily reorder the layout and order of your widgetized areas.

For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display:

1. An opt-in form,
2. A click for support button, and
3. A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …

(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)

Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar area in the same order as they were arranged in the site’s active widget area …

If we rearrange these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …

(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)

The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …

This instantly reorganizes the layout of the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us image button (2) now sits above the newsletter subscription form (1) …

(Widgets are very easy to use!)

Pretty cool, huh?

Here are some more useful things about using widgets that are also worth knowing about:

Widget Management – Widget Customizer Section

Depending on the WP theme that you have installed on your site, you can also manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to your live website.

You can do lots of edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and moving around your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all 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 WordPress 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 prior to publishing it (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area shown earlier.

Widget Configuration

As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how information is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …

(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)

In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have change the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.

Reorganizing sidebar layout with 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 static websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to reorganize the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like newsletter subscription forms, or just add features like a list of pages on your website, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, an archives section, custom menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying advertisements, quotations or survey questions & results, content from RSS feeds, video thumbnails, Twitter feeds, and more.

While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …

(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)

Most widgets offer additional options that allow you to further configure them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …

(Most widgets provide users with customizing options!)

Using WordPress Widgets

As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your site 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 great tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of cool tips on how to get the most out of WordPress with 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:

• WP Features Explained – WordPress Plugins
• WordPress For Business – An Introduction To WordPress Themes

Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see our related posts section.

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