There are so many great benefits to using WordPress to build and manage a website. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your website and rearrange your site’s layout with no web coding skills required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and control various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This article explains how WP widgets work, why widgets make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can be used to add new functionality to your website or blog.
Widgets – How Do They Work? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For Business Website Owners
(Widgets 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 script or list 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 script PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds too geeky. As you are about to learn, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
WP widgets help you manage specific 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 developed to provide an easy way to allow WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete features in areas of your site without touching any web 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 many features you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- pages on your site
- blog categories
- archives
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- comments
- clickable text ads
- user testimonials
- poll results
- RSS feed items
- shopping cart forms
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide more detailed explanations of WP plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new functionality to WordPress and alter the design of your site.
As you will soon discover, WP themes affect where widgets work on your website and some plugins also install accompanying widgets that can enhance your website or blog’s performance.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas on your site where widgets can be added to.
Typically, widget-driven functions can be found in the sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be located in the site’s header area, in the footer area, even below the content.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes provide only a single widgetized section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme shown above, and you can see that this specific theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below contains a number of widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-enabled sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Can I See My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets area can be accessed inside the WordPress administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets screen displays 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 using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active and available on your site.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain 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 visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets are added to your Widgets area as new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all right inside your Widgets section using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
Using drag & drop technology lets you easily rearrange the 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 show:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the site’s active widget section …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your 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 banner (2) has been moved to the place above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
There are some other useful things about using widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Customize Widgets Section
Depending upon the WP theme that you have installed, you can also customize and manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do several things to widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and reorganizing 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’ve done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
Widget management 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 prior to publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you earlier, WordPress lets you completely reorder how information displays in widgetized 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 …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, 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 dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve 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 site’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like shopping cart forms, or just add useful features like page lists, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, a post archives section, menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying clickable ad banners, testimonials or polls, RSS feed content, product catalog images, social media buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable 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)
Most widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further configure these. 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 …
(Most widgets provide users with customization!)
Using Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use a number of different 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 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business 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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