As we’ve discussed in this article, there are loads of benefits in using WordPress for managing and growing your digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, or reconfigure the site’s layout without coding skills and knowledge required.
WordPress lets you easily add, remove, and manage content on your website’s sidebar navigation menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme) like:
- nested list of pages
- categories
- post archives
- menus
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- post comments
- advertisements
- quotations
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed content
- shopping cart forms
- image galleries
- social media sharing buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s capabilities, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use Widgets In WordPress
Widgets – The Basics
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s first explain some of the basics about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also be found in the content area …
(Many WP themes provide multiple widget-ready areas)
These widget-ready layouts correspond to a feature inside your Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active and available for use on your site.
The Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove things using widgets with drag & drop inside the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout using drag & drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
If we could peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the backend widget area …
Let’s now change the order the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping some of these items around …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar area …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ image button (2) is found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar menu is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your WordPress widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing your WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from your sidebar navigation area. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to toggle between expanding and collapsing the item …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets give you little to no configuration options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Theme Customizer
Depending on which theme you are using, you’re also able to manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before committing anything live to your website.
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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer screen in the backend.
You can do several modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and moving widgets around), and everything is done in real time. If you are happy with the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving your changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display your latest changes to your site visitors.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to start configuring a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:
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