As we explain in this post, there are many great things about choosing WordPress for building and growing a website or blog. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, or reconfigure your site’s layout without programming skills and knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, delete, and control content from your site’s sidebar (and 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 like:
- index of pages
- blog categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to resources
- most popular posts
- post comments
- clickable ad banners
- quotations
- poll questions & results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscriber form
- images
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Amazon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
The Basics
Before we begin configuring and using widgets, let’s first review some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in areas in your theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also show up in the content area …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-ready areas)
These widgetized layouts correspond to a feature inside the Widget management area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Screen
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that are available.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become active and available for use on your site.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets by dragging and dropping items from the Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the layout of your site’s widget-ready areas with drag and drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your WordPress site)
If we were to peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features appear on the site in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget area …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of the elements around …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the order of items in the site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) is located above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar area …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove a widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from the sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets provide a number of settings that allow you to further configure these. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible 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 toggles between expanding and collapsing 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, 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 configuration options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending on which theme you are using, you can also 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 website.
The ability to manage widgets from 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 before publishing changes (to avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets in the Customize section)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This will bring you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do many things to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and it’s all done in real time. If you are happy with what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become available to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once your changes are saved, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because the theme you choose can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial about how to use Widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:
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"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
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