As discussed in this post, one of the many benefits of using WordPress to manage and grow your web presence is that you can easily add content, enhance your site’s functionality, or change the layout of your site without web coding knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and control various types of content on your blog’s sidebar navigation area (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- site pages
- blog categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only the pages you select
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- user comments
- clickable ads
- user testimonials
- survey questions & results
- RSS content
- newsletter subscription form
- product catalog images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and why they make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using WordPress Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s go over some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widgetized sections in your theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar menu, header area, and footer sections. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also appear inside the content area …
(Many WP themes offer users multiple widget-ready sections)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Screen
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
The right-hand section of the screen displays the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used to perform their function on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout by dragging & dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the active widget area …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) now sits above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Removing widgets from your sidebar navigation menu is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from your sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar navigation area. 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 making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, 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, 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 give you little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Widget Previews
Depending on the theme you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize your widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with what you see before making any permanent changes to your website or blog.
The ability to manage widgets inside the dashboard is a valuable 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 (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do a number of edits to widgets 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 the changes will instantly become visible on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved the changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all 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 begin configuring various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials.
Click here to continue:
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"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
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