There are many great benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform for building, managing and growing your website. 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 with no web programming skills and knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and rearrange various blocks of content from your site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
This post explains how WordPress widgets work, why widgets make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can be used to help you supercharge your web site.
What Are WordPress Widgets? A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For Newbies
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
WP widgets are self-contained modules 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, to add features and functions to a website, you have to know how to write web code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds too technical. As will soon see, widgets are perfect for non-techies.
Widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without the need to edit code.
(Widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without requiring knowledge of coding)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove functions to certain parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any underlying code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your 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 additional components you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- site pages
- post categories
- archive
- menus
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- post comments
- advertising banners
- quotations
- polls & surveys
- RSS content
- opt-in form
- videos
- social media buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we write more extensively about WordPress plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even drastically alter the whole look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will soon discover, WordPress themes affect where widgets display on your website and a number of plugins add accompanying widgets that will improve your site’s functionality.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled areas on your site where you can have widgets in.
Normally, functions powered by widgets can be found in your sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be in your site’s header area, in the footer, even above or below your content area.
It all depends on what theme 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 navigation …
(Some WP themes have only one widgetized section)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, so you can see that the theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only location where users can add widgets to their site using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes various widget areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widget sections)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WordPress theme …
(Multiple widgets 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 WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Can I See My WP Widgets?
To use widgets, access the Widgets area located inside your WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that can be used 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 made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become activated for use.
In addition, your Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured 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 in the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to your visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new plugins are installed on your website, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all in your Widgets area using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
Use drag & drop to easily reorder the order and layout of your 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:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your site)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in the same order as they were arranged in the active widget bar …
If we change the order the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
As you can see, 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 at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty simple, huh?
Let me just show you some more things worth knowing about using widgets:
Widget Management – Theme Customizer
Depending upon the actual WP theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize and manage 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 several things in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes 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 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 it (to avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily reorganize how content is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widgets in the sidebar section 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 layout with widgets can help 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 your web templates to rearrange the layout, customize features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add other features like a nested list of pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, a post archives section, custom menus, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertisements, testimonials or polls, RSS content excerpts, product images, social media buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)
Many widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further configure them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets provide users with customizing options!)
Using Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various types of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.
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