There are loads of great benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform for building, managing and growing your digital presence. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout without programming skills and knowledge.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and control various blocks of content from your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
This blog post explains what WordPress widgets are, why they are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help to add functionality to your site.
WordPress Widget: Understanding WordPress Widgets For Business Website Users
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A widget is a small block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or list item to your WP site.
The WordPress application is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to learn how to script web code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to discover, widgets are perfect for non-techie website owners.
Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your site without the need to edit code.
(WP widgets help you control many features and functions on your website without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, a widget allows you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove functions to parts of your WordPress site without touching any web code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the additional components you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- list of pages
- categories
- archive
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- your most read posts
- comments
- text ads
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- RSS content
- newsletter subscription form
- product images
- social media buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide more detailed explanations of WordPress plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add new features to WordPress and change the whole look and feel of your site.
As you will learn shortly, themes affect how widgets work on your website and a number of plugins add accompanying widgets that will extend your site’s capabilities.
Widgetized Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Normally, widget-powered functions can be found in the theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, these can also be located in the site’s header, in the footer area, even above or below the content section.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some themes have only one widget area)
Here is the widget panel of the theme shown above, so you can see that this specific theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see, the only place where you can add widgets to your website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown below includes various widget areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-ready areas)
Here is the widget screen of the theme shown above, and you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WordPress theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Can I See My WP Widgets?
To access the Widgets area go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets panel in your browser window …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets (e.g. widgets for displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …) and active widgets.
These widgets are available right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new WordPress plugins are installed on your site, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all from your Widgets section just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
Use drag and drop to easily reconfigure the order and layout of your widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget area …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us image button (2) is found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Easy, huh?
Here are some more things about WordPress widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Theme Customizer
Depending on the actual WP theme that you have installed, you’re also able to manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to your live website.
You can do lots of edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
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 (and avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorder how content is displayed in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many static websites, you would need to edit code in the website’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like shopping cart information sections, or just add useful features like a list of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, a post archives section, custom page menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest comments, a section displaying advertising banners, quotations or survey results, RSS feed content, videos, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Many widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further customize these. 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. and more …
(Most widgets provide users with customization!)
Using Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WordPress site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus many useful tips for getting the most benefit out of WordPress with widgets:
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 1
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 2
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 4
Related Posts
If you are a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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