Category: WordPress Customization

There are loads of great benefits to using the WordPress web publishing application to manage and grow a business online. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout without having code editing skills and knowledge.

WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, remove, and reconfigure various blocks of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.

(WordPress widgets)

This post explains how widgets work, why they make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can expand the functionality of your site.

How Do Widgets Work? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For Business Website Users

(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)

WordPress widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or item to your site.

WordPress 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 know how to write PHP code.

Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, widgets are perfect for non-techie website owners.

WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without requiring knowledge of coding.

(WordPress widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills)

Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.

In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:

• Easily add, edit and remove blocks of code in certain areas 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 cool things you can add to your site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:

• list of your web pages
• content categories
• archives
• custom page menus
• links to external sites
• posts that you want to promote
• recent comments
• clickable images
• testimonials
• surveys & polls
• RSS feed items
• shopping cart information
• product catalog images
• social media sharing buttons
• display widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
• administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)

In other posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add loads of new functionality to WordPress and even drastically alter the whole look and feel of your website or blog.

As you will learn in a moment, WordPress themes can affect where widgets work on your web site and a number of plugins include accompanying widgets that will further improve your website’s functionality.

Widgetized Areas

Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections on your site where widgets can appear.

Typically, features managed by widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be in the site’s header area, the footer area, sometimes even below or above the content.

It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site or blog.

For example, the theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …

(Some WordPress themes provide only a single widgetized section)

Here is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, and you can see that this theme only includes one widgetized 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 area.

In contrast, the WP theme shown below includes a number of different widget-ready areas …

(Many themes provide multiple widget-enabled sections)

Below is the widget panel of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular WordPress theme …

(Multiple widgets 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 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …

(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)

Where Do I Access My WP Widgets?

The Widgets panel is located inside your WordPress dashboard and can easily be accessed from the WP dashboard menu by clicking on Appearance > Widgets …

This brings up the Widgets screen in your browser …

(Widgets Screen)

The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.

The right-hand section of the screen displays 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 screen.

Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become activated for use on your site.

In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to your visitors …

(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)

Sometimes, whenever new WP plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …

(Installing new WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)

WordPress Widgets Features: Drag And Drop

Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them within your Widgets section using drag & drop …

(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)

Use drag & drop to easily reconfigure the layout of your website’s widgetized sections.

For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:

1. A subscription form,
2. A contact support button, and
3. A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …

(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)

Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar area in the same order as they were arranged in the active widget bar …

If we reorganize these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …

(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)

The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …

As you can see, this instantly changes the layout of your 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) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …

(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Let’s go over some other useful things worth keeping in mind when using widgets:

Widget Management – Preview Widgets

Depending on the actual WP 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 these changes to the live website.

You can do many things in preview mode, like adding, removing and reorganizing your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is 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 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 prior to publishing changes (to avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown earlier.

Widget Configuration

As we have explained earlier, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how information is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …

(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help improve visitor experience)

In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the 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.

Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s user 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 web templates to rearrange the layout, customize features on page elements like user registration areas, or just add other features like page lists, or a dropdown menu of your blog post categories, an archived published posts section, custom page menus, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest excerpts of comments added to your posts, a section displaying text ads, testimonials or poll questions & results, content from RSS feeds, product catalog images, Twitter 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 give you little to no configuration options)

Many widgets provide a number of settings that allow you to further customize these. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …

(Most widgets offer customization!)

Using Widgets

As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website 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 different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of cool tips on how to get 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:

• WordPress Features Explained – WordPress Plugins
• WordPress For Newbies – An Overview Of WordPress Themes

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 using the WordPress platform please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.

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