There are lots of great benefits to using WordPress for building and managing your website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and reconfigure the layout of your site with no web programming skills and knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and control various types of content on your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this blog post you will learn how widgets work, why they are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help you add functionality to your website.
What Do Widgets Do? A Basic Guide To Widgets For Business Website Owners
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
WP widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a text box or list item to your site.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to learn how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As will soon discover, widgets are perfect for non-techie users.
WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding.
(WordPress widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without requiring coding skills)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove content sections in areas of your website without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your WP theme on ”widgetized” 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 site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- list of pages
- content categories
- blog post archive
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- most read posts
- post comments
- image banners
- user testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- shopping cart forms
- video thumbnails
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we provide an overview of WordPress plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add loads of new features to WordPress and change the whole design of your website.
As you will soon learn, WordPress themes can affect how widgets display on your web site and some plugins also install accompanying widgets that can improve your site’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can display.
Typically, you will find features driven by widgets in your sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be found in the site’s header section, the footer section, even below the content.
It all depends on what theme you have installed on your site.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes have only one widget area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme shown above, so you can see that this theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your site using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes a number of widgetized areas …
(Many WordPress themes provide multiple widget-enabled sections)
Here is the widget section of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)
Where Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets area go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up your Widgets screen in your browser window …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets area displays 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 using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly 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 to use on your site. 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 Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to your visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new plugins are installed on your site, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them all from your Widgets area using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
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 site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features appear on your site)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in the same order as they have been arranged in the site’s active widget section …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the 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 …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic button (2) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty cool stuff, huh?
There are some more things worth knowing about using WP widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the actual theme that you have installed, you can also manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do several edits to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, 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 have 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 any changes you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly rearrange how content displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the site’s sidebar by switching 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.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to rearrange the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like shopping cart forms, or just add things like page lists, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archive section, menus to display selected pages, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying clickable ads, user testimonials or survey questions & results, RSS feed items, image galleries, social media share 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 provide users with little to no customization)
Many widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further configure things. 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 …
(Most widgets give you customization!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WordPress website or blog 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 detailed tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of great tips on how to get 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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