There are lots of great benefits to using the WordPress CMS platform for managing and growing a digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout with no code editing skills required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange various blocks of content from your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This blog post explains how WordPress widgets work, why widgets make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can improve the functionality of your website.
How Do WordPress Widgets Work? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For Newbies
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or item to your website or blog.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions to a website, you need to know how to script web code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As will soon see, widgets are made for non-techie users.
WP widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your website without having to mess with code.
(WordPress widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without having to mess with code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove features in parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your WordPress theme on ”widgetized” areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the many features you can add to your WP site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- pages on your site
- site categories
- archive
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- advertising
- testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS content
- subscriber form
- video
- social media buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide an overview of WordPress plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how these add loads of new features to WordPress and even drastically change the look and feel of your website.
As you will learn in a moment, themes affect how widgets work on your site and some plugins add accompanying widgets that will further enhance your site’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections on your site where you can add widgets to.
Usually, you will find widget-driven features in your sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in the header, the footer section, and even above or below your content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes only provide one widgetized area)
Here is the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see that the theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see, the only area where you can add widgets to your website using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-enabled areas)
Below is the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets panel is located inside the WP dashboard and can be accessed from the WP admin menu by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and can be used.
In addition, your Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets (e.g. widgets for displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …) and active widgets.
These widgets are available in the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new WP plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all in your Widgets section using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
With drag and drop technology you can easily reconfigure the layout of your site’s widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your site)
Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in their active widget area …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the layout of the site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
Let’s go over some other things worth keeping in mind with widgets:
Widget Management – WordPress Theme Customizer
Depending upon the WP theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do many edits in preview mode, like adding, deleting and moving around your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside your own 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 before publishing any changes (to avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily reorder how content displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the layout in the sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your website’s templates to rearrange the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like newsletter subscription forms, or just add other features like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, a blog post archive section, customized menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying clickable ad banners, client testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS content excerpts, image galleries, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no configurable options)
Most widgets provide various options that allow you to further customize these. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets offer configurable options!)
Using Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of great tips for getting the most out of WordPress with widgets:
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 1
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 2
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 4
Related Posts
If you are new at WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please see other posts we have published on this site.
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
***