There are so many benefits to using the WordPress CMS platform for building and growing a business online. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout without code editing skills.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, delete, and control various types of content from your site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
In this blog post you will learn what WordPress widgets are, why they are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help you supercharge your website.
WP Widgets: A Basic Guide To Widgets For Business Website Owners
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
Widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a text box or item to your website.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you have to learn how to write code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds like geek speak. As you are about to learn, widgets are made for non-techie website owners.
Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without requiring coding skills.
(Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your site without having to edit code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and delete features to areas of your site without touching 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 functions you can add to your WP site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- list of your web pages
- blog post categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- recent comments from users
- clickable ads
- testimonials
- poll results
- RSS feed items
- customers login section
- images
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- 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 these easily add loads of new functionality to WordPress and change the design of your site.
As you will learn in just a moment, WP themes can affect where widgets display on your web site and a number of plugins also add accompanying widgets that will further fine-tune your website or blog’s performance.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added to.
Usually, you will find functions driven by widgets in the sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be in your site’s header, the footer, even above or below your content.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes provide only a single widget-ready area)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, and you can see that the theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see, the only location where users can add widgets to their site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown below contains various widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-ready areas)
Below is the widget panel of the theme shown above, and you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WordPress theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added 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 themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
To access the Widgets area go to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets section displays a list of 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-and-dropping items to different sections of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately available for use.
The Widgets panel 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 retain their pre-configured 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 in the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets are added to your Widgets section whenever new plugins are installed on your site …
(Installing WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them right inside your Widgets area just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
With drag & drop technology you can easily rearrange the layout and order of your website’s widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the active widget area …
Let’s now rearrange the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This immediately changes the order of items in the site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) is placed above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Easy, huh?
Let’s go over some other useful things about using widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending upon the actual 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 see before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do lots of things in preview mode, like inserting, removing 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’ve 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!)
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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the site’s sidebar section 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.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can improve 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 site’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to 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 categories, an archived content posts section, custom page menus, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable ad banners, client testimonials or survey results, RSS content, video thumbnails, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, 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 customizable options)
Many widgets provide additional options that allow you to further customize your site features. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets offer 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 WP web 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 step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various kinds of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus many cool tips for getting the most benefit 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, this information 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 using WordPress for a business website please see other posts we have published on this site.
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