As we’ve discussed in this post, there are so many benefits in choosing the WordPress web publishing application for building and managing your digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, and reconfigure the site’s layout with no code editing skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, delete, and manage content on your blog’s sidebar navigation area (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- index of pages
- blog categories
- archive
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- your most popular posts
- recent comments from users
- clickable text ads
- quotations
- survey results
- RSS feed content
- shopping cart forms
- video
- social media sharing buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what 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 we show you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
The Basics
Before we get into configuring and using widgets, it helps to first cover some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widget-ready sections in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar area, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme, widgets can also be added below or above the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-enabled areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that are available.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets by dragging and dropping)
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. become immediately activated for use.
In addition, your Widgets screen 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.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, reorder and remove things using widgets by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout with drag and drop ease.
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 click for support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site’s sidebar area in the same order as they were arranged in the back-end widget area …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging & dropping some of the items 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 instantly reorganizes the layout of the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s 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) has been moved to the place above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar navigation menu is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar navigation section …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting a WP widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing your WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from your sidebar area. You can always restore widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized. This includes hiding information from users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the settings for that 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 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 offer little to no customizable options)
Previewing Widgets
Depending on which WordPress theme you use, you’re also able to 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 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 your widget content will appear before publishing any changes you’ve made (and avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do several edits to the widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will then be instantly updated and made visible on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since the WordPress theme you use tend to affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you complete this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial series.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:
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"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
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