As we explain in this article, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress to manage your website or blog is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, or redesign the layout of your website with no web coding skills required.
WordPress allows you to easily add, remove, and reconfigure content from your site’s sidebar section (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme is installed on the site) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- list of pages
- post categories
- post archives
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- post comments
- advertising
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- content from RSS feeds
- newsletter registration form
- videos
- social media share buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we explain how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, it helps to first review some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar area, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also be added inside the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging and dropping)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active and can be used to perform their function on your site.
Your Widgets area also 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 pre-configured settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, reorder and remove widgets using drag & drop inside the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the order and layout of your widgetized layout with drag and drop ease.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a WordPress 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 exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget area …
Let’s now change the order the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of these items around …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar area …
As you can see, this immediately changes the layout of the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar, and the support graphic button (2) is now placed above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Navigation Section
Deleting widgets from your sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar navigation area …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Removing a WordPress widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reinstate 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 visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget toggles between expanding and collapsing the item and displays the widget’s settings …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, 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 may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Widget Customizer Section
Depending on the theme you are using, you’re also able to 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 committing anything to your website or blog.
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 the widget content will appear before publishing it (to avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize section)
Wherever you are 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 several edits to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly updated and made visible on the site’s frontend.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial (one to work in and one to see the site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to begin configuring various frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial about how to use WordPress widgets.
To keep reading, click here:
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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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