As we have explained in this article, one of the many benefits of using WordPress is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, and reconfigure the layout of your website without having code editing skills or knowledge.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, remove, and reorganize content in your blog’s sidebar navigation section (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) 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:
- index of pages
- blog categories
- archive
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to external sites
- your most read posts
- post comments
- text ads
- quotations
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed items
- customers login section
- images
- social media share buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Twitter)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how they work and why widgets make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use WordPress Widgets
The Basics
Before we explain how to configure widgets, let’s go over some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar area, header area, and footer. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also be used below or above the content area …
(Many WP themes offer users multiple widget-enabled sections)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
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. become available for use on your site.
The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets by dragging and dropping items from your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange the order and layout of your website’s widgetized sections by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
If you take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as they are arranged in the active widget area …
If we change the order these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar area …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Menu
Removing widgets from your sidebar navigation area is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing your WP widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar menu. You can always restore widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to expand the item …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove the 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 an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
WP Theme Customizer
Depending on which WordPress theme you use, you’re also able to preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like what you see 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 your widget content will appear before publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize section)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer area in the backend.
You can do several edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and moving widgets around), and this will all be done in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving the changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because the theme you choose 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 work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to see your site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial series on using Widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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