As we’ve explained in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing WordPress is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, or reconfigure your site’s layout without requiring programming skills.
WordPress allows you to easily add, delete, and rearrange various blocks of content in 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 your theme) like:
- list of pages
- categories
- archived published posts
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- your most read posts
- recent comments
- clickable ad banners
- testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- opt-in subscription form
- product catalog images
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how they work and why widgets make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial we explain how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s review some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar navigation section, header area, and footer sections. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can also be found in the content area …
(Many WordPress themes offer users a number of widget-ready areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets section 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 with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become available for use.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag & Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets just by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout using drag & drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the backend widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of the elements around …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar navigation section, and the support banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The Sidebar Navigation Area
Removing widgets from your sidebar navigation area is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from the sidebar area …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove your widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This includes hiding information from 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 expands 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, click Delete to remove your 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 Previews
Depending upon which theme you use, you’re also able to manage widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before making any permanent changes to your site.
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 before publishing it (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do several edits and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will be instantly applied and made visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving your changes, the new updates will automatically be displayed on your site.
Because the theme you choose determines how elements display on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to see the site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to begin configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this series of tutorials on using WordPress widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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