There are lots of great benefits to using WordPress to manage and grow a digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout without having web programming skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and manage various types of content in your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
This blog post explains what WordPress widgets are, why they are ideal for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to add functionality to your web site.
What’s A Widget? Understanding Widgets For Business Website Owners
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A WP widget is a small block of code that performs 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 have to learn how to script PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As will soon learn, WP widgets are made for non-techies.
With WordPress widgets, users don’t need to know how to program PHP or manipulate PHP code to expand the functionality of their website.
(Widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without having to edit code)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way of giving WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and remove features in certain parts of your site without touching any code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your WordPress 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 many great things you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- index of pages
- content categories
- archives
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- comments
- advertising banners
- user testimonials
- survey questions & results
- RSS content
- subscriber form
- product catalog images
- social media buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we provide more detailed explanations of WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add new functionality to WordPress and alter the entire look and feel of your site.
As you will learn shortly, themes can affect where widgets display on your web site and many plugins add accompanying widgets that will help further fine tune your site’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections on your site where you can add widgets to.
Normally, widget-powered functions can be found in the sidebar, but depending on the theme, these can also be found in your site’s header section, in the footer section, even above or below your content section.
It all depends on the theme that 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 WP themes provide only one widget-ready area)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the above theme, and you can see that this particular theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see, the only area where you can add widgets to your website using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes a number of widget areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widgetized areas)
Below is the widget section of the theme shown above, and you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(Multiple WordPress widget 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 WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Do I Access My WP Widgets?
To use widgets, access the Widgets section located inside the WP admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
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-and-dropping items to different areas of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become available for use.
In addition, your Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
By default, 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Archives, Meta, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all right inside your Widgets area using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
Drag and drop technology lets you easily rearrange the order and layout of your widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to call 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 display on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the site’s active widget bar …
If we rearrange these widgets in the Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the layout of the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) is now placed above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Let me show you some other useful things worth knowing about widgets:
Widget Management – Preview Widgets
Depending upon the WP theme that you have installed, you’re also able to 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 many edits and adjustments 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 to your site visitors.
(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 before publishing changes (and avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorganize how content displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the sidebar area 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.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve visitor 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 the web templates to reorganize the order of elements, customize features on page elements like shopping cart forms, or just add features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archive section, custom page menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable text ads, testimonials or polls, RSS feed items, images, Twitter feeds, 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 provide users with little to no customization)
Most widgets provide additional options that allow you to further customize your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets offer customizing options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website 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 different types of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of great tips for getting 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 WordPress newbie, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about 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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"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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