As we explain in this article, there are loads of great things about choosing WordPress to manage and grow your website or blog. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, or reconfigure your site’s layout without having web coding skills and knowledge.
WordPress lets you easily add, delete, and reconfigure various types of content in your blog’s sidebar (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- nested page lists
- categories
- blog post archive
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- advertising
- customer testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed items
- newsletter registration form
- product catalog images
- social media buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Amazon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial we teach you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first explain some of the basics of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also appear in the content area …
(Many WordPress themes offer users a number of widgetized areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the screen displays all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately active on your site.
The Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout using drag & drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
If you look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget screen …
Let’s now change these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar navigation section …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in your site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the support image banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Navigation Section
Deleting widgets from your sidebar navigation menu is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from your sidebar navigation section …
(Search widget)
To remove an active widget, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(How to delete WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar navigation menu. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to 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 expand the item …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to delete your 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 something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Theme Customizer
Depending on which WP theme you choose, you can also preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before making any permanent changes to your website or blog.
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 (to avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do several modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing 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 the changes will instantly become visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once the changes are saved, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
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 complete this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how the site is coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to start configuring a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section one of this series of tutorials.
Click on this link to view Part 2:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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