There are lots of great benefits to using WordPress to build and grow your website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and reconfigure the layout of your website without code editing skills.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and control various blocks of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
This article explains what WordPress widgets are, why they are ideal for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to supercharge your website or blog.
WP Widget: Understanding WordPress Widgets For New Users
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WordPress widgets are self-contained blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a text box or menu item to your WordPress site.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to script PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds too technical. As will soon learn, widgets are made for non-techie website owners.
Widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without the need to touch code.
(Widgets help you control many features and functions on your website without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove blocks of code to parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any web code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your 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 additional components you can add to your WP site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WP widgets:
- page lists
- blog categories
- archive
- menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- text ads
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS feed content
- shopping cart forms
- product images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we provide an overview of WP plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how these can easily add new features to WordPress and alter the look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will learn shortly, themes can affect how widgets work on your website and some plugins also add accompanying widgets that can further fine-tune your website’s performance.
Widgetized Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas on your site where widgets can appear.
Typically, this is going to be in the sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be located in the header, in the footer area, even above or below your content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area adding functionality to the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WP themes provide only one widget area)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme shown above, and you can see that this theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of widget-ready areas …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
Here is the widget section of the theme above, and you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular WP theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added 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 section)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets section is located inside your WP dashboard 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.
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 by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active on your site.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display 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 right out of the box in the default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new plugins are installed on your site, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them within your Widgets area using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
Drag & drop technology lets you easily reconfigure the layout of your website’s widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar section in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget bar …
If we change the order the above widgets in the Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the layout of your sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) is found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty cool, huh?
There are some other things about using widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Preview Widgets
Depending on the theme that you have installed, you can also manage 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 the live website.
You can do several modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing your active 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 to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside your 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 it (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you earlier, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorder 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-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements 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 many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like newsletter subscription forms, or just add things like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archives section, custom page menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest comments, a section displaying image banners, user testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS content, video galleries, social media buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add 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 them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets give you configurable options!)
How To Use 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 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 a number of different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your site, plus many great tips on how to get the most benefit 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 a new WordPress user, 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 see other posts we have published on this site.
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