As we’ve explained in this post, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress CMS platform is that you can easily add content, enhance your website, or rearrange your site’s layout with no code editing skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily add, remove, and manage various blocks of content in your website’s sidebar section (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- nested page lists
- categories
- archive
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- most popular posts
- comments
- text ads
- client testimonials
- survey questions & results
- content from RSS feeds
- opt-in form
- product catalog images
- social media buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial series we teach you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use WordPress Widgets
The Basics
Before we get into configuring and using widgets, let’s review some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar section, header area, and footer. Depending on your theme, widgets can also display in the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become available for use on your site.
The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and remove things using widgets by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If we could peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the back-end widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of these elements around …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar navigation area …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar
Removing widgets from your sidebar navigation menu is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from your sidebar …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete a widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets provide a number of 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.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to expand the item …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configurable options)
Previewing Widgets
Depending on which WP theme you use, you’re also able to manage widgets without actually making 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 your widget content will appear before publishing changes (to avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do plenty of edits, modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like adding, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and it will all be done in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly applied and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved the changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since the WordPress theme you choose determines how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This saves 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 start configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial about how to use WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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