As we discuss in this article, one of the many benefits of using the WordPress CMS platform is that you can easily add content, enhance your website, or reorganize your site’s layout without having any programming skills.
WordPress allows you to easily add, remove, and rearrange content on your blog’s sidebar navigation area (or header and footer sections, 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 the theme you have installed) like:
- page lists
- blog categories
- blog post archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- surveys
- RSS content excerpts
- subscriber form
- video
- social media share buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:
In this tutorial series we show you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s first make sure that you understand some of the basic concepts of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar navigation area, header area, and footer sections. 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 areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically 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 actively display on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets Using Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reorder the order of your website’s widget-ready sections using drag & drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
If you were to peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the backend widget section …
If we change these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging & dropping items …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the layout of your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using 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 area, and the support section (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Section
Deleting widgets from your sidebar area is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from your sidebar …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for any other 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 making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible 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 expand the item …
(Toggle to 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 settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizable options)
Preview Your Widgets
Depending upon the WP theme you have installed, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing anything live to your site.
The ability to manage widgets from within your WP 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 any changes (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do many edits to widgets in preview mode (like adding, 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 the changes will instantly become visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to begin configuring various commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
***
This is the end of part one of this series of tutorials on how to use Widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
***
"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
***