There are lots of great benefits to using the WordPress CMS platform for managing and growing a web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site and rearrange the layout of your website without having any web coding skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, delete, and control various blocks of content in your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
This blog post explains how WordPress widgets work, what widgets do and how widgets can help to supercharge your site.
Widgets – How Do They Work? A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For New Users
(WordPress widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WP widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or list item to your website or blog.
The WordPress application is written using a web 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 PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds like geek speak. As you are about to learn, WP widgets are made for non-technical users.
With widgets, users don’t need to know how to write code or manipulate PHP code in order to enhance the functionality of their website.
(Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your site without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily add, edit and remove sections of code to certain parts of your WordPress site without touching any code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your theme 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 additional components you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- site pages
- blog categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- clickable ad banners
- user testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed content
- subscription form
- image galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide additional information about plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add loads of new features to WordPress and even drastically alter the whole design of your website.
As you will soon learn, themes can affect where widgets work on your website and some plugins include accompanying widgets that will help further enhance your website or blog’s performance.
Widgetized Areas
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Usually, widget-powered functions can be found in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be located in the header section, footer, even below or above your content section.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WordPress themes only have a single widgetized section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, so you can see that this specific theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below includes various widgetized areas …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, where you can see how many widget areas this particular theme includes …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of 2 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 use widgets, access the Widgets area located inside your WP admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
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 using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active and available.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets appear in your Widgets section whenever new plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them inside your Widgets section just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)
Use drag and drop technology to easily reorder the order and layout of your website’s widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
If you take a peek 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 section …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the layout of the site’s 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 banner (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple, huh?
There are some more things worth keeping in mind with widgets:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending on the WordPress theme that you have installed on your site, you can also manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing any changes to your live website.
You can do many modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and moving around 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 on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside your WordPress 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 manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorder how content displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily change the order of elements 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 widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add features like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, an archived content posts section, custom menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying text ads, testimonials or surveys, RSS feed content, images, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Many widgets offer a number of settings that allow you to further configure these. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets provide users with customization!)
Using WP Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great tutorials showing you how to use different types of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus many great tips on how to get 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 a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following 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 the WordPress web content management software please see other posts we have published on this site.
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