There are so many great things about using the WordPress CMS platform for managing and growing your web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site and reconfigure your site’s layout without having programming skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and manage various types of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This article explains how widgets work, why widgets are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help enhance the functionality of your website or blog.
What Are WordPress Widgets? An Overview Of Widgets For New Users
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WordPress widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or menu item to your WP site.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to program code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to discover, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
WP widgets don’t require users to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code in order to expand the functionality of their websites.
(Widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your website without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and delete sections of code in parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display 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 functions you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- index of pages
- content categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only the pages you select
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- clickable ad banners
- user testimonials
- poll questions & results
- content from RSS feeds
- subscriber form
- images
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes add loads of new functionality to WordPress and even drastically change the look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will soon learn, themes affect where widgets work on your site and many plugins also install accompanying widgets that can help further extend your website or blog’s functionality.
Widgetized Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Usually, widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in the header, in the footer area, even above or below the content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WP themes have only a single widget enabled area)
Below is the widget section of the theme above, where you can see that this theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes multiple widget areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widgetized sections)
Here is the widget section of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets 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 themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets section is located inside the dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets you have available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become available for use on your site.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
By default, your site already comes with several 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, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new WordPress plugins are installed on your website, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets section …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all from your Widgets section just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
Using drag and drop technology lets you easily reconfigure the layout of your widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in the site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Let me show you some more things worth knowing about using WP widgets:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending on the actual theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do several things to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, removing and moving around 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’ve 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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained earlier, WordPress lets you completely reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your web templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add things like a nested list of pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, a post archives section, menus to display selected pages, links to recommended resources, a list of your most read posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable text ads, user testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS content excerpts, images, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)
Most widgets provide various options that allow you to further customize these. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you configuration options!)
Using Widgets
As we have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website, plus many cool tips for getting the most benefit out of WordPress using 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 posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.
***
"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
***