There are so many benefits to using the WordPress web publishing application for managing and growing a website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your website without code editing skills and knowledge.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and reconfigure various blocks of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this article you will learn what WordPress widgets are, why they are great tools for non-technical users and how widgets can enhance the functionality of your website or blog.
WordPress Widget: Understanding WordPress 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 feature, or a text box or item to your website.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As you are about to discover, widgets are perfect for non-techies.
With widgets, users don’t need to know how to program or manipulate PHP code in order to enhance the functionality of their sites.
(WP widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without having to mess with code)
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 allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and delete functions to certain parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any web code, and
- Rearrange 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 functions you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- index of pages
- site categories
- post archives
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- opt-in form
- product catalog images
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes add loads of new functionality to WordPress and even drastically change the look and feel of your website.
As you will learn in a moment, WP themes can affect how widgets work on your website and many plugins include accompanying widgets that can further fine tune your website’s capabilities.
Widgetized Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Typically, widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be in your site’s header section, the footer section, sometimes even above or below the content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WP themes provide only a single widget-ready area)
Below is the widget screen of the theme above, and you can see that this specific theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below contains various widget-ready areas …
(Many WP themes provide multiple widget sections)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas this specific theme includes …
(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 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 WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets area is found within your WP administration area and can be easily accessed from the WP dashboard menu by choosing Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
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 activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose 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 the default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to your visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets appear in your Widgets section when new plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them all in your Widgets area just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
Use drag-and-drop to easily reorder the layout and 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:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar section in the same order as they have been arranged in their active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the layout of the site’s 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 section (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty cool, huh?
Let’s go over some more things worth knowing about using WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the actual WordPress theme that you have installed, 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 your changes to your live website.
You can do a number of modifications and adjustments to your widgets 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’ve 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!)
Widget management 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 you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorder how content displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar by switching 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.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help 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 the site’s templates to rearrange the layout, customize features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add things like a list of your web pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, an archives section, customized menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertisements, client testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS feed content, video galleries, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no customizable options)
Most widgets provide additional options that allow you to further configure things. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets provide users with customization!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WordPress site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use various types of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of cool 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 a new WordPress user, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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