As we’ve explained in this post, there are so many great benefits in using the WordPress CMS platform to manage and grow your digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, or reconfigure the site’s layout without requiring any code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange content in your blog’s sidebar (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- list of your web pages
- content categories
- archives
- menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- clickable ads
- quotations
- surveys
- content from RSS feeds
- shopping cart information
- video galleries
- social media buttons
- add 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 WordPress widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s capabilities, see this article:
In this tutorial we are going to show you how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before we start configuring and using widgets, let’s first cover some of the basics of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in areas in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar navigation section, header area, and footer sections. Depending on your theme, widgets can also show up below or above the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the window displays all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & 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. become immediately available for use.
The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove things using widgets with drag & drop in the Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout with drag and drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
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 area …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Widget Area by dragging & dropping items …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the layout of the sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) is now located above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve user experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from the sidebar navigation menu …
(Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete your widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing your WP widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from your sidebar. You can always reactivate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets offer a number of settings that allow you to further customize them. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access 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 expands 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 give you little to no configurable options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no customization)
Preview Widgets
Depending upon which theme you have installed on your site, you can also manage widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before committing anything to your website or blog.
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 prior to publishing it (to avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This will bring you to the Customizer screen in the backend.
You can do many edits and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, removing and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly applied and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving your changes, your new updates will automatically show on your site.
Since the theme you choose can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install your 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 work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how your site is coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to start configuring various frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this series of tutorials.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click here:
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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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