As we explain in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing WordPress is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, and reconfigure the layout of your site without code editing skills and knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and manage content from your website’s sidebar (or header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- list of your web pages
- blog post categories
- post archives
- custom page menus
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- clickable ads
- user testimonials
- poll results
- RSS content
- customers login section
- product catalog images
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s functionality, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial series we explain how to use and configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using WordPress Widgets
Widgets – The Basics
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, let’s first review some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar navigation section, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also get added inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets panel displays a list of 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 with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and can be used for their purpose.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site 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 on your site like:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
If we took a look inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget area …
Let’s now rearrange the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar section …
This immediately changes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation section, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(How to delete WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove your WordPress widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from the sidebar. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This includes hiding information from users (but allowing access to registered users), displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the widget’s settings …
(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 offer little to no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Preview Widgets
Depending on which theme you are using, you can also customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before committing anything live to your site.
The ability to manage widgets from within the WordPress dashboard is a valuable feature of WordPress. You can work in preview mode inside the WordPress Theme Customizer screen (Appearance > Customize) and see how the widget content will appear prior to publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do many modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving changes, the new configuration will automatically be added to your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to see your site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s start configuring various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial on how to use Widgets.
To view Part 2, click this link:
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