As we’ve discussed in this post, there are many great things about choosing the WordPress CMS platform to build and manage your website or blog. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, or reconfigure the layout of your site without requiring coding skills.
WordPress lets you easily insert, remove, and control content from your site’s sidebar (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- nested list of pages
- site categories
- post archives
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- your most read posts
- recent comments
- advertising banners
- quotations
- poll results
- content from RSS feeds
- opt-in form
- video galleries
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s capabilities, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial series we will show you how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets In WordPress
Basic Concepts
Before we start configuring and using widgets, let’s explain some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also be found in the content area …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget-enabled areas)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays 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 the sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used to perform their function on your site.
In addition, your Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout with drag & drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If we take a look inside this site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget area …
Let’s now change these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping some of these widgets around …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar, and the support graphic button (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar Section
Removing widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from your sidebar section …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Removing widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized. This can include things like hiding information from users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget toggles between expanding and collapsing the item and displays the settings for the widget …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to delete 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 configurable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the WP theme you choose, you can also preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with what you see before committing anything to your website.
The ability to manage widgets from within the dashboard 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 it (and avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This brings you to the Customizer area in the back-end.
You can do several edits and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting 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 then be instantly applied and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving changes, the new configuration will automatically be added to your site.
Because the WordPress theme you use can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature 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 the site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s begin configuring various frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial series.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:
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