As we have explained in this post, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress web publishing tool for building, managing and growing your website or blog is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site, or reconfigure the site’s layout without programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, delete, and control various types of content from your website’s sidebar navigation area (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- list of your web pages
- site categories
- blog post archive
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- recent comments from users
- clickable images
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS feed items
- shopping cart forms
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Twitter)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial series we teach you how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use WordPress Widgets
The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first cover some of the basics about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widget-ready sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar area, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also display in the content area …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-enabled areas)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget management area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active on your site.
In addition, your Widgets panel 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 settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete widgets by dragging and dropping items inside your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)
You can also easily rearrange the order of your theme’s widget-ready sections using drag and drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your site)
If you took a look inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the backend widget section …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar area …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar, and the support graphic banner (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar menu is very 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 WP widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing a widget)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from your sidebar. You can always restore 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 information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to expand the item …
(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 settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the theme you have installed on your site, you’re also able to preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before making any permanent changes 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 prior to publishing changes (to avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize feature)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer area in the back-end.
You can do a number of edits, modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like adding, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving the changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because the theme you use affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how your site is coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to configure a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial about how to use Widgets.
Click here to continue:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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