There are so many benefits to using WordPress to build, manage and grow a digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site and rearrange your site’s layout with no code editing skills required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, remove, and manage various types of content from your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This article explains what WP widgets are, what makes them so useful and how widgets can help you to grow your site.
What’s A Widget? An Overview Of Widgets For Website Owners
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or item to your site.
The WordPress application is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order 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 sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, WordPress widgets are made for non-techies.
Widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without the need to touch code.
(WordPress widgets help you control many features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily add, edit and remove content sections in areas of your website without touching any code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your WP 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 functionality you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- nested list of pages
- blog post categories
- post archives
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- most popular posts
- post comments
- image banners
- quotations
- survey results
- RSS content excerpts
- shopping cart forms
- video thumbnails
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we provide additional content about WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how these easily add new functionality to WordPress and change the design of your website.
As you will learn in just a moment, WordPress themes affect how widgets work on your website and many plugins also come with accompanying widgets that will further enhance your website or blog’s functionality.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Normally, features powered by widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, these can also be located in the header section, the footer area, and even above or below your content section.
It all depends on what theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes only have one widget enabled section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see that this theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only area where you can add widgets to your website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below includes multiple widget-enabled areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users multiple widget sections)
Below is the widget screen of the theme above, and you can see how many widget areas this specific 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 panel located inside your WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active on your site.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. 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 in the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets appear in your Widgets section as 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
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them in your Widgets section using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
With drag & drop technology you can easily rearrange the order and layout of your site’s widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar section in the same order as they were arranged in the active widget section …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(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 the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Here are a few other things worth knowing about widgets:
Widget Management – Preview Widgets
Depending on the actual WordPress theme that you have installed, you’re also able to manage and customize 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 the live website.
You can do lots of edits and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is done 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!)
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 change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily reorganize how content displays 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 technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily rearranged the sidebar menu 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.
Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets 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 many static websites, you would need to edit code in the website’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, customize features on page elements like shopping cart information sections, or just add features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, a blog post archive section, menus that display only selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying advertising, client testimonials or survey results, content from RSS feeds, 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 provide users with little to no customization)
Most widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further configure them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets provide users with customizable options!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your 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 different types of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus many 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 a new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about using WordPress please see our related posts section.
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***