There are many great benefits to choosing the WordPress web publishing tool to build, manage and grow a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout without programming skills.
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 too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This blog post explains how WordPress widgets work, why widgets can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help add new functionality to your site.
How Do WordPress Widgets Work? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For New Users
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a text box or list item to your website or blog.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you need to learn how to write web code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, WordPress widgets are made for non-technical users.
WordPress widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without having to edit code.
(WordPress widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove content sections to certain parts of your site without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display 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 additional components you can add to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WordPress widgets:
- page lists
- post categories
- archives
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- image banners
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- content from RSS feeds
- newsletter registration form
- product catalog images
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we provide additional information about WP plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add new functionality to WordPress and even drastically change the look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will see in a moment, themes can affect how widgets display on your website and a number of plugins add accompanying widgets that will further fine tune your site’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections on your site where widgets can display.
Typically, functions controlled by widgets can be found in your sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in your site’s header area, footer, even above or below your content section.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes provide only one widget enabled section)
Below is the widget section of the theme above, so you can see that the theme only includes one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only place where you can add widgets to your website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below includes various widget-ready areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users a number of widget-enabled sections)
Below is the widget section of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
How Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets panel is located inside the WordPress administration area and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active and can be used on your site.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
By default, your site already comes with several 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 right out of the box in the default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to your visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog, you may find that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them in your Widgets section using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)
With drag & drop you can easily rearrange the order of your site’s widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your WordPress site)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in their active widget bar …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in your sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic banner (2) is found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
There are some other things worth knowing about using widgets:
Widget Management – Customize Widgets Section
Depending upon the theme that you have installed on your site, you can also customize and manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing these changes to your live website.
You can do lots of things to widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is done 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 to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from within your dashboard is a great 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 changes (to avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained previously, WordPress lets you completely reorder how content is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the site’s sidebar area by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to 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 static websites, you would need to edit code in the website’s templates to rearrange the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add features like page lists, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archives section, menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying text ads, customer testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS feed items, image galleries, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Many widgets offer additional options that allow you to further customize things. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets provide users with configuration options!)
Using WP Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WP website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use different kinds of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of useful tips on how to get the most out of WordPress using 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 related posts useful:
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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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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