As we’ve explained in this article, there are loads of benefits in using WordPress for building and growing your digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, and rearrange the layout of your website without programming skills and knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and rearrange various types of content on your blog’s sidebar area (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’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) like:
- website page list
- post categories
- archive
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- post comments
- clickable text ads
- customer testimonials
- survey questions & results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscription form
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and why widgets make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we show you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before we explain how to configure widgets, it helps to first make sure that you understand some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide sections in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar menu, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also get added below or above the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-ready areas)
These widget-ready layouts correspond to a feature inside your Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become active and available for use.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to use on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the order of your website’s widget-enabled 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 display things on your site like:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features appear on your site)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features appear on the site’s sidebar area in the same order as they have been arranged in the back-end widget area …
Let’s now rearrange the order of these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some things around …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar menu …
This immediately changes the order of items in the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar area. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access to registered users), displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget expands the item and displays the widget’s settings …
(Toggle to 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 may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending on which theme you have installed on your site, 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 your customizations before committing anything to your site.
The ability to manage widgets from within your own dashboard is a great 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 it (and avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer screen in the back-end.
You can do many modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode (like adding, 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 instantly become visible on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved your changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display the new changes to your site visitors.
Because the theme you use determines how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar navigation area.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to begin configuring a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials on using Widgets.
Click on this link to access the rest of this tutorial series:
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