There are many great benefits to choosing the WordPress web publishing software for building and managing your digital presence. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and rearrange your site’s layout without code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and reconfigure various types of content from your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this post you will learn what widgets are, why they can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can be used to improve the functionality of your website or blog.
How Do Widgets Work? Understanding WordPress Widgets For Beginners
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WP widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a script or item to your website or blog.
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 need to learn how to write code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too geeky. As you are about to learn, widgets are made for non-techies.
WP widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills.
(Widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove functionality to areas of your site without touching any code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your WordPress theme on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the features you can add to your site’s sidebar area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WordPress widgets:
- nested list of your web pages
- post categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only the pages you select
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- recent comments
- clickable text ads
- testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- subscriber form
- images
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we write more extensively about WP plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how these add loads of new functionality to WordPress and even drastically alter the look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will soon learn, WP themes affect how widgets work on your site and some plugins also come with accompanying widgets that can enhance your website or blog’s performance.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Usually, widgets can be found in your sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be in the header section, in the footer, sometimes even below your content area.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes have only one widget enabled area)
Below is the widget screen of the above theme, where you can see that this WP theme only includes one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only area where you can add widgets to your site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown below contains a number of widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget sections)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, where you can see how many widget areas the theme includes …
(Multiple widgets 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 three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets screen is located inside your WP administration area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets you have available.
The right-hand section of the screen displays 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 available for use on your site.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
In a default WordPress installation, 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new WP plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all right inside your Widgets area just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
Using drag & drop lets you easily reconfigure the order of your site’s widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the site’s active widget bar …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in the site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) has been moved to the place above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
Let me just show you some other useful things worth knowing about WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Preview Widgets
Depending upon the WordPress theme that you have installed, you can also 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 many edits and adjustments in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and moving around your current 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 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 you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you previously, WordPress lets you completely reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the layout in the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the web templates to rearrange the order of elements, customize features on page elements like a member login section, or just add other features like a list of your web pages, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, a post archives section, menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying clickable images, client testimonials or survey results, RSS content excerpts, image galleries, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, 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 configurable options)
Many widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further customize your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets offer customizable options!)
Using WordPress Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WordPress 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 different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of useful 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress software please see other posts we have published on this site.
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