As we discuss in this post, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, improve your site’s functionality, or reconfigure the layout of your website with no web coding knowledge required.
WordPress lets you easily add, remove, and control content in your blog’s sidebar section (and 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 the WordPress theme you have installed) like:
- list of pages
- post categories
- blog post archive
- custom menus
- links to resources
- most read posts
- recent comments
- clickable images
- quotations
- survey results
- content from RSS feeds
- registration box
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first explain some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
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 the footer area. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can sometimes also show up in the content area …
(Many themes provide a number of widget-ready areas)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available for use on your site.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete widgets using drag and drop inside your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout with drag and drop ease.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in 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 the order certain features appear on your WordPress site)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features appear on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the back-end widget section …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar navigation area …
This immediately reorganizes the order of items in your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar section …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your 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 your sidebar navigation menu. You can always reactivate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes 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 settings for the widget …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to delete your 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 give you little to no configurable options)
Preview Widgets
Depending on the WP theme you are using, you can also customize and manage your widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with 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 prior to publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do several edits and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become available on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
As soon as your changes have been saved, your new configuration will automatically be displayed on your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar section.
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, the next step is to configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial about using Widgets.
Click here to continue:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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