As discussed in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing WordPress is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, and reorganize your site’s layout with no coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, delete, and reconfigure various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar navigation menu (or header and footer sections too, 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:
- list of pages
- post categories
- archive
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- clickable ad banners
- client testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- newsletter subscription form
- image galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Amazon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s functionality, go here:
In this tutorial we are going to show you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s first go over some of the basics about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar navigation area, header area, and the footer area. Depending on the theme, widgets can also get added in the content area …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widgetized areas)
These widget-ready layouts correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging and dropping)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active and available for use.
In addition, the Widgets area 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.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets using drag and drop in the Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout by using drag-and-drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site in the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar navigation menu …
This instantly reorganizes the layout of the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ graphic banner (2) is placed above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar Area
Deleting widgets from your sidebar section is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar section …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove a WP widget)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want removed from the sidebar navigation area. You can always restore widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized. 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.
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, delete the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no configurable options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no customization)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending upon the theme you have installed on your site, you’re also able to preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before making any permanent changes 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 changes (and avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer screen in the back-end.
You can do several modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, removing and moving widgets around), and everything is done in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly applied and made visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
***
This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials about using Widgets.
Click here to continue:
***
"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
***