As we’ve discussed in this article, there are many benefits in using WordPress for managing and growing your website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, and rearrange your site’s layout with no code editing skills required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and control content from your blog’s sidebar section (and header and footer sections, depending on your theme) 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 the WordPress theme you have installed) like:
- website page list
- blog categories
- archive
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- most popular posts
- post comments
- advertising
- testimonials
- surveys & polls
- content from RSS feeds
- newsletter registration form
- video thumbnails
- social media share buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
Using WordPress Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before we begin configuring and using widgets, let’s first make sure that you understand some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar navigation menu, header area, and footer sections. Depending on your theme, widgets can also display in the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widget areas)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active on your site.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets using simple drag and drop inside the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the layout and order of your widgetized areas using drag & drop.
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 ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features appear 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 the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of these items around …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar navigation menu …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the layout of your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation section, and the ‘contact us’ image banner (2) is placed above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar section …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove a widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from the sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be further customized. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget expands the item and displays the settings for that widget …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, delete your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configurable options)
Preview Widgets
Depending on which WordPress theme you use, 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 live to your site.
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 any changes (to avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This brings you to the Customizer screen in the backend.
You can do a number of things to your widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become available on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving your changes, the new settings will automatically be displayed on your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your 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 your changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials.
Click here to continue reading:
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