As discussed in this article, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, and reconfigure the layout of your site with no web coding skills required.
WordPress allows you to easily insert, delete, and rearrange content from your blog’s sidebar navigation menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on the site) 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 theme) like:
- pages on your site
- blog post categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- advertisements
- testimonials
- survey questions & results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscription form
- image galleries
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s functionality, see this article:
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 first go over some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in your theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also be used inside the content area …
(Many themes provide a number of widget-ready areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
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 on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets just by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout using drag-and-drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now change these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping items …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the layout of the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar area, and the support section (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your Sidebar Menu
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete a WordPress widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove your WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from the sidebar navigation menu. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to toggle between expanding and collapsing the item …
(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 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 provide users with little to no customization)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending on which WP theme you have installed on your site, you can also manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with what you have done before committing anything live to your website or blog.
Widget management is a valuable 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 any changes you’ve made (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do many edits and adjustments in preview mode (like adding, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and everything is done in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly applied and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved your changes, the new configuration will automatically show on your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer 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 learn how to configure various commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial about how to use Widgets.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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