As we’ve explained in this article, there are loads of great things about choosing WordPress to build, manage and grow a digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, or rearrange your site’s layout without requiring any programming skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and reconfigure content from your website’s sidebar (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the WordPress theme you have installed) like:
- site pages
- site categories
- archives
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- your most popular posts
- user comments
- clickable images
- quotations
- survey results
- content from RSS feeds
- opt-in subscription form
- image galleries
- social media buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how they work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, let’s make sure that you understand some of the basics about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar navigation menu, header area, and the footer area. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can sometimes also appear inside the content area …
(Many themes provide a number of widget-ready areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget management area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets with drag & drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used for their purpose.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout by using drag-and-drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
If you take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget area …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping some of the elements around …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar menu …
As you can see, this instantly changes the layout of the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar section, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From The Sidebar Menu
Deleting widgets from your sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from the sidebar menu …
(Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, you can either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete a widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Removing your widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from your sidebar navigation area. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This can include things like 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.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget toggles between expanding and collapsing the item and displays the settings for the widget …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, delete the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configurable options)
Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the WordPress theme you choose, you can also customize and manage widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before committing anything live to your website or blog.
Widget management is a great feature of WordPress. You can work in preview mode inside the WordPress Theme Customizer screen (Appearance > Customize) and see how the widget content will appear prior to publishing changes (and avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize section)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do several modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like adding, removing and moving widgets around), and it will all be done in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will be instantly applied and made visible on the site’s frontend.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once the changes have been saved, WordPress will automatically update the widget settings and display the new changes to your site visitors.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to configure a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
***
This is the end of section one of this tutorial series about using WordPress widgets.
To continue, click this link:
***
"Learning WordPress has been a huge stumbling block for me. I've been looking for something that covers absolutely everything but doesn't cost an arm and a leg. Thank you so much ... you have just provided me with what I have been looking for! Truly appreciated!" - Tanya
***