There are loads of benefits to choosing WordPress to build and grow your web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your website and rearrange the layout of your website with no coding skills required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and reconfigure various blocks of content in your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this article you will learn what WordPress widgets are, why widgets can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to expand the functionality of your web site.
What Are WordPress Widgets? An Introduction To Widgets For Newbies
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WP widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a script or item to your WP site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you need to learn how to program code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds too geeky. As you are about to learn, WordPress widgets are made for non-techie users.
Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without requiring coding skills.
(Widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete functionality in certain parts of your WordPress site without touching any 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 many features you can add to your WP site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WP widgets:
- nested page lists
- blog post categories
- archived posts
- custom menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- post comments
- clickable text ads
- testimonials
- poll results
- RSS feed items
- shopping cart forms
- images
- social media sharing buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we write more extensively about WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even drastically change the entire design of your website or blog.
As you will see shortly, themes can affect where widgets work on your site and some plugins also add accompanying widgets that will extend your site’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled areas on your site where widgets can show.
Typically, widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be in the header, footer, and even below or above your content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes provide only a single widget enabled section)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the above theme, so you can see that this particular WP theme only includes one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only place where you can add widgets to your site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of widget areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-ready areas)
Here is the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this WP theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added 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)
Where Do I Access My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets area is found inside your WordPress administration area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active and can be used.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
By default, your site already comes with a number of 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, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to your visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets get added to your Widgets area as new WP plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all inside your Widgets area using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
Drag-and-drop lets you easily reorder the layout of your site’s widget-enabled sections.
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 banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
If we were to peek inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the active widget bar …
If we change these 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 …
This instantly changes the layout of your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
There are some more things about using WordPress widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the actual WP theme that you have installed on your site, you can also customize and manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do lots of things to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around the currently added 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 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 prior to publishing it (to avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly reorder how content displays in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the layout in the sidebar menu by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the website’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add other features like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archives section, menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest comments, a section displaying advertising banners, customer testimonials or survey results, RSS content, product catalog images, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Many widgets offer various options that allow you to further customize these. 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 dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customization!)
How To Use Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WordPress website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use various kinds of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your site, plus many great 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 new WordPress user, you may also find the following posts useful:
- WordPress Features Explained – What Is A WP Plugin
- WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To WP Themes
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP platform please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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