As we’ve discussed in this post, there are loads of great things about choosing the WordPress CMS platform to manage and grow a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site, or rearrange your site’s layout without code editing skills required.
WordPress allows you to easily insert, remove, and control content from your website’s sidebar section (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) like:
- list of your web pages
- blog post categories
- post archives
- menus
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- post comments
- advertising banners
- quotations
- survey results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscription form
- image galleries
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets In WordPress
What You Need To Know First
Before we start configuring and using widgets, let’s cover some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in areas in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can sometimes also get added in the content area …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widget-enabled areas)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that are available.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become available for use.
The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets by dragging and dropping items from your Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout by using drag-and-drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your WordPress site)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget area …
If we rearrange these widgets in the Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar section …
This immediately changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar, and the support section (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve user experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from your sidebar area …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting a WordPress widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from your sidebar navigation menu. You can always restore widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets provide additional options that allow you to further customize these. 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.
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, remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)
Customize Widgets Section
Depending on which WordPress theme you have installed on your site, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before committing anything to your site.
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 before publishing any changes (and avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer area in the backend.
You can do several modifications and adjustments to the widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will then be instantly updated and made visible on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving the changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because the theme you choose determines how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the 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, the next step is to learn how to start configuring various commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial series on how to use Widgets.
To continue, click here:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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