There are many benefits to using the WordPress web publishing application for building, managing and growing your website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout with no code editing skills or knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and rearrange various blocks of content in your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this blog post you will learn what WordPress widgets are, why widgets are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help to grow your site.
WordPress Widget: A Basic Guide To Widgets For Business Owners
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A WordPress widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a text box or list item to your website.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions to a website, you need to learn how to program PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to see, widgets are perfect for non-techies.
WP widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your website without having to touch code.
(Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without having to touch code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and remove blocks of code to areas of your website without touching any code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your WP theme 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 cool things you can add to your site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- index of pages
- categories
- archived content posts
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- most popular posts
- user comments
- clickable ads
- testimonials
- survey results
- content from RSS feeds
- shopping cart information
- video
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide an overview of plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new functionality to WordPress and even drastically alter the whole design of your website.
As you will see in a moment, themes can affect where widgets work on your site and a number of plugins also add accompanying widgets that can improve your website or blog’s performance.
Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled areas on your site where you can have widgets in.
Normally, this is going to be in your sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be found in the header area, the footer area, even below or above the 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 for the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WordPress themes provide only a single widget section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme shown above, and you can see that this specific theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown below contains a number of widget areas …
(Many themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
Here is the widget screen of the theme shown above, so you can see how many widget areas the theme includes …
(Multiple widgets 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 WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated 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. automatically become active.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their 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 Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to your visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets display in your Widgets area whenever new WP plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all inside your Widgets area just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
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 show:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
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 bar …
Let’s now rearrange the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the order of items in your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Easy, huh?
Here are a few other useful things worth knowing about WP widgets:
Widget Management – Customize Widgets Section
Depending upon the WordPress theme that you have installed, 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 these changes to the live website.
You can do lots of modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is done 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!)
The ability to manage widgets inside 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 (to avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorganize how information displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the site’s sidebar by switching 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.
Rearrange sidebar elements 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 static websites, you would need to edit code in your web templates to rearrange the order of elements, customize features on page elements like a customers login section, or just add other features like a nested list of pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, a post archives section, menus that display only selected pages, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying image banners, testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS feed content, video thumbnails, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Many widgets offer additional options that allow you to further configure things. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets give you customizing options!)
Using Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily 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 detailed tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus many cool tips for getting the most benefit 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about using WordPress please see our related posts section.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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