There are loads of great benefits to using the WordPress web publishing software to manage and grow a business online. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and reconfigure the layout of your site without web coding skills or knowledge.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, remove, and reconfigure various types of content from your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
This blog post explains what widgets are, why widgets are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help you supercharge your site.
About WordPress Widgets: An Overview Of WordPress Widgets For Website Owners
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
WP widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, or a text box or item to your website or blog.
The WordPress application 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 have to learn how to script web code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, widgets are made for non-techies.
WP widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your website without the need to edit code.
(WordPress widgets help you manage many features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove functions to certain parts of your WordPress site without touching any code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the features you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- nested page lists
- categories
- archived blog post entries
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to resources
- most read posts
- post comments
- advertisements
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- RSS content
- subscription form
- product catalog images
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes easily add loads of new functionality to WordPress and alter the design of your website or blog.
As you will learn in just a moment, themes can affect how widgets display on your website and some plugins include accompanying widgets that can extend your website’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Typically, widget-driven features can be found in the sidebar, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be found in your site’s header area, in the footer section, sometimes even below your content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the WP theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WP themes only have a single widget-ready area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see that the theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your site 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-ready areas …
(Many themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
Below is the widget section of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WP theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets area can be easily accessed inside the WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up your Widgets area in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that are available.
On the right-hand side of the window, 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 screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately available for use.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
By default, 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Archives, Meta, etc. to site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new plugins are installed on your site, you may find that new widgets are also added to your Widgets section …
(Installing new WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all inside your Widgets area using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
With drag and drop you can easily reconfigure the layout of your widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
If we were to peek inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in their active widget bar …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic button (2) is placed above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
There are some other useful things worth knowing about using WP widgets:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending upon the actual theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing any changes to the live website.
You can do a number of edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, removing and reorganizing your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done in real time. If you like what you’ve done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from your 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 any changes (and avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly rearrange how content displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the site’s 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.
Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most static websites, you would need to edit code in your website’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, customize features on page elements like shopping cart information sections, or just add other features like page lists, or a dropdown menu of your blog post categories, a post archives section, customized menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying text ads, testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS content excerpts, video thumbnails, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)
Most widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further configure these. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customizing options!)
Using Widgets
As we 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 useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of useful tips for getting the most benefit 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 a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about using WordPress please see our related posts section.
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