As we have explained in this post, there are so many great benefits in using the WordPress web publishing software to build and manage a website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site, and rearrange the site’s layout without code editing skills and knowledge required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, remove, and rearrange content in your blog’s sidebar navigation menu (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 your theme) like:
- nested page lists
- categories
- archive
- menus
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- image banners
- client testimonials
- poll results
- RSS feed items
- newsletter registration form
- video galleries
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this tutorial series we show you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use WordPress Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before we start configuring and using widgets, let’s first go over some of the basics about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar menu, header area, and the footer area. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also be found inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-ready sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become available for use.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets using simple drag & drop in the Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the order of your theme’s widget-enabled sections by using drag-and-drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the active widget section …
If we change the order these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar area …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using 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 image banner (2) is now found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Removing widgets from your sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from your sidebar navigation section …
(Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings 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 section …
(Removing a WordPress widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site 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 settings for that widget …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, delete the 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 something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Previewing Widgets
Depending upon which theme you use, you can also customize and manage widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before committing anything 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 the widget content will appear before publishing any changes (to avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do many things to widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since the theme you choose tend to affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing 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.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to begin configuring a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial series on how to use Widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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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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