There are so many great things about choosing WordPress to build, manage and grow your website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout without code editing skills and knowledge.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange various blocks of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this post you will learn what widgets are, what they do and how widgets can enhance the functionality of your website or blog.
What Are WordPress Widgets? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For Website Owners
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a script or menu item to your website.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to learn how to write code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to see, WordPress widgets are made for non-technical users.
With widgets, you don’t need to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code to enhance the functionality of your site.
(Widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without requiring knowledge of coding)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily add, edit and delete sections of code in certain parts of your site without having to touch any web code, and
- Rearrange how various elements display 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 functions you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- website page list
- content categories
- post archives
- custom page menus
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- advertising banners
- quotations
- poll results
- content from RSS feeds
- opt-in form
- image galleries
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide additional information about plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add new features to WordPress and even drastically alter the look and feel of your site.
As you will learn shortly, themes can affect how widgets display on your web site and a number of plugins also install accompanying widgets that will help further extend your website’s usability.
Widgetized Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas on your site where widgets can be added to.
Normally, you will find widget-powered features in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be in the header, footer, and even above or below the content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes have only a single widgetized area)
Below is the widget panel of the theme above, so you can see that this particular WP theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only location where you can add widgets to your site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below contains multiple widget areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widget sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme above, and you can see how many widget areas are included in the theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of two 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 access the Widgets area log into your WP administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-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. become active.
The Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. 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 in your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Archives, Meta, etc. to your site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets appear in your Widgets area whenever new WP plugins are installed on your site …
(Installing new WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all from your Widgets area using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
Using drag & drop technology lets you easily rearrange the order of your site’s widgetized 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 click for support button, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features appear on your site)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the site’s active widget section …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(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 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 graphic banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Easy, huh?
Here are a few other useful things about WP widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending on the theme that you have installed, you can also manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do many things in preview mode, like inserting, removing 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 have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from 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 changes (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily and quickly rearrange how information is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned 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 widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help 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 the web templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add features like nested page lists, or a dropdown menu of your categories, a blog post archive section, customized menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable images, client testimonials or survey questions & results, RSS feed content, video galleries, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configurable options)
Most widgets provide various options that allow you to further customize 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 data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets give you configuration options!)
Using WP Widgets
As we have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding 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 widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of 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 posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about using the WordPress CMS software please see our related posts section.
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***