As we discuss in this post, one of the many benefits of using WordPress is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site, or reconfigure the layout of your site with no code editing skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, delete, and reorganize various types of content in your site’s sidebar (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you have installed) 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 your theme) like:
- nested page lists
- content categories
- archive
- menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- user comments
- clickable ads
- testimonials
- poll results
- RSS content
- customers login section
- video galleries
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we show you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first make sure that you understand some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in the theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can also display in the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-enabled areas)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging and dropping)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available for use on your site.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Reorganize Widgets Using Drag & Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove widgets by dragging and dropping items from your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as they were arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now rearrange the order of these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of the widgets around …
(Drag & drop widgets in the 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 site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar, and the support section (2) is now located above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience)
Deleting Widgets From The Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar navigation area is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from your sidebar …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete your WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove a widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to toggle between expanding and collapsing the item …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no configuration options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Preview Widgets
Depending on which theme you choose, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before committing anything to your site.
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 before publishing it (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do many modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After your changes have been saved, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since the WordPress theme you choose determines how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar area.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how the changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of section one of this series of tutorials about using Widgets.
To continue, click this link:
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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