There are many benefits to using the WordPress web publishing software to build and manage a business online. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure the layout of your website without having any programming skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and control various blocks of content on your site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this article you will learn how widgets work, what makes them so useful and how widgets can help to grow your website.
What Do Widgets Do? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For Beginners
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WP widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or list item to your WP site.
The WordPress software is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you need to learn how to program PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds like geek speak. As will soon learn, WP widgets are made for non-technical users.
Widgets don’t require you to know how to program or manipulate PHP code in order to expand the functionality of your site.
(WordPress widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove functionality in parts of your site without having to touch any web code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your WordPress 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 great things you can add to your WP site’s sidebar area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WP widgets:
- list of pages
- categories
- post archives
- menus
- links to resources
- your most popular posts
- comments
- clickable ads
- testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- subscriber form
- product images
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- 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 features to WordPress and even alter the look and feel of your website.
As you will soon discover, WP themes affect how widgets work on your site and a number of plugins also install accompanying widgets that will further enhance your website or blog’s performance.
Widgetized Themes
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Normally, this is going to be in your sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be located in your site’s header section, in the footer section, and even below or above the content area.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes have only a single widget-ready area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme above, so you can see that this particular WP theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see, the only location where you can add widgets to your site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown below includes a number of widget-ready areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widgetized sections)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas are included in the theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in 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 section)
How Do I Access My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets section is located inside your WordPress admin area and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up your Widgets panel in your browser window …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that can be used 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 using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately activated for use on your site.
In addition, your Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Meta, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets appear in your Widgets area when new plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them inside your Widgets section using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
Use drag & drop to easily reconfigure the order of your website’s widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your site)
If you were to peek 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 section …
Let’s now change the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the layout of your sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Let’s go over some other useful things about using widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – WP Theme Customizer
Depending on the theme that you have installed, you’re also able to customize and manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do a number of modifications and adjustments in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes 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 on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
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 prior to publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you previously, WordPress lets you 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 button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganize sidebar layout using 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 layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add things like a list of pages on your website, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, an archives section, menus that display only selected pages, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertising, user testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS content, image galleries, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configurable options)
Many widgets provide various settings that allow you to further configure things. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you configurable options!)
How To Use Widgets
As we have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of useful 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 WordPress newbie, 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 get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress content publishing platform please see our related posts section.
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