There are loads of great benefits to choosing the WordPress web publishing tool to build and grow your website. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your website with no web coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, remove, and control various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This blog post explains what widgets are, what they do and how widgets can help to add functionality to your web site.
About WordPress Widgets: An Overview Of Widgets For Business 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 script or item to your site.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you need to learn how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds too technical. As will soon discover, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
WordPress widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your website without having to touch code.
(Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove functionality in certain areas of your website without having to touch any underlying 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 many things you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WP widgets:
- list of pages
- blog categories
- archived blog post entries
- custom menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- post comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- polls
- RSS content excerpts
- newsletter registration form
- product images
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we write more extensively about WordPress plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even change the whole look and feel of your website.
As you will see in a moment, WP themes affect how widgets display on your site and many plugins add accompanying widgets that can extend your website or blog’s performance.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can show up in.
Normally, widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be in the site’s header, in the footer section, sometimes even below or above your content section.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes only provide a single widget enabled area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, and you can see that the WP theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of widget areas …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas this specific theme includes …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets 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)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
To access the Widgets area log into your WP admin and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
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 sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become available for use.
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.
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, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets appear in your Widgets section whenever new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all from your Widgets section using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Using drag-and-drop lets you easily reconfigure the order of your widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the site’s active widget bar …
Let’s now rearrange the order these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and 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 your sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) is now placed above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty cool stuff, huh?
Here are a few more useful things about using WP widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Theme Customizer
Depending upon the theme that you have installed on your site, you can also manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do several modifications and adjustments in preview mode, like inserting, removing and reorganizing the currently added 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 to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
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 your widget content will appear prior to publishing it (and avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorder how content is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the sidebar section by switching around 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 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 the site’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, customize features on page elements like a newsletter registration form, or just add things like a page index, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, an archived content posts section, menus to display selected pages, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying advertising banners, customer testimonials or polls & surveys, RSS feed content, video thumbnails, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Most widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further customize your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customizing options!)
Using WordPress Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your 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 detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your web site, plus many great tips for getting 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 a new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please see other posts we have published on this site.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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