As we explain in this post, there are so many benefits in choosing WordPress to manage and grow your business online. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, and rearrange the site’s layout with no programming skills required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and rearrange various types of content in your blog’s sidebar (or header and footer sections too, 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’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) like:
- pages on your site
- post categories
- post archives
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- comments
- advertisements
- quotations
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- opt-in form
- images
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
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 series we show you how to use and configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before we begin configuring and using widgets, let’s first go over some of the basics about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in your theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar navigation area, header area, and the footer area. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also be used in the content area …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget-enabled areas)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
The right-hand section of the screen displays all “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become available for use.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout using drag & drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If we 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 area …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar navigation menu, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Blog Sidebar Navigation Menu
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting a WP widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove your widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from the sidebar. You can always reactivate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access to registered users), displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes 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 …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets give you little to no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no customizable options)
Previewing Widgets
Depending upon which WordPress theme you have installed on your site, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations 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 the widget content will appear before publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes 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 feature in the backend.
You can do a number of edits and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, deleting 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 then be instantly updated and made visible on the site’s frontend.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved your changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because the theme you choose can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets.
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, let’s start configuring a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial.
Click on this link to continue reading:
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