There are lots of great things about choosing the WordPress CMS platform to build and manage your digital presence. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your website without web programming skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and manage various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This blog post explains how widgets work, why they can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can add new functionality to your website.
How Do Widgets Work? An Introduction To Widgets For Business Website Owners
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A WP widget is a small block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or list item to your site.
The WordPress application is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions to a website, you need to know how to write web code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, WordPress widgets are perfect for non-techie website owners.
Widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without having to mess with code.
(Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and remove sections of code to certain parts of your WordPress site without touching any underlying code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your theme on ”widgetized” areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the many additional components you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- website page list
- blog post categories
- blog post archive
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- comments
- clickable ads
- customer testimonials
- polls
- RSS feed items
- subscriber form
- product images
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide an overview of plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add new functionality to WordPress and even change the look and feel of your website.
As you will see shortly, themes can affect where widgets work on your website and some plugins also come with accompanying widgets that will further extend your site’s usability.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas on your site where widgets can show up in.
Usually, functions powered by widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be found in the site’s header, in the footer area, sometimes even below or above your content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WordPress themes only provide a single widget-ready area)
Below is the widget panel of the theme above, and you can see that this particular theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where users can add widgets to their website using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes a number of widget-ready areas …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular WordPress theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets section log into your WP admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become available for use on your site.
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 settings.
In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets (e.g. widgets for displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …) and active widgets.
These widgets are available in your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets get added to your Widgets area when new WP plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them in your Widgets area using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
Using drag & drop technology lets you easily reorder the layout of your widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget bar …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This instantly changes the order of items in the site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us image button (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
Let’s go over some other things worth knowing about WP widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing any changes to your live website.
You can do several modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done in real time. If you like what you have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
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 your widget content will appear prior to publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained earlier, with WordPress you can quickly and easily rearrange how information displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the sidebar section by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most static websites, you would need to edit code in your website’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add features like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archive section, menus to display selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest excerpts of comments added to your posts, a section displaying clickable ads, testimonials or polls & surveys, RSS content excerpts, image galleries, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
Many widgets provide various options that allow you to further customize your site features. 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 data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customizable options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP web site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your site, plus many cool tips on how to get the most benefit out of WordPress with widgets:
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 1
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 2
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 4
Related Posts
If you are a new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about using WordPress please see our related posts section.
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