As we have explained in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress web publishing tool for building and managing your website is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, or reconfigure the layout of your website with no programming skills and knowledge required.
WordPress lets you easily add, remove, and reconfigure content on your website’s sidebar (or header and footer sections too, 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:
- list of pages
- categories
- post archives
- menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- post comments
- clickable ad banners
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS feed items
- subscriber form
- video thumbnails
- social media sharing buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:
In this tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using Widgets In WordPress
The Basics
Before we start configuring and using widgets, let’s cover some of the basics about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widget-ready areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can also be used in the content area …
(Many themes provide multiple widget areas)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets screen displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets by dragging & dropping)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active and can be used for their purpose.
The Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to use on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets Using Drag & Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove widgets by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout using drag & drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site’s sidebar section in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the back-end widget section …
If we change the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar section …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar navigation section, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) now sits above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from the sidebar menu …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove a WP widget)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from the sidebar navigation menu. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be further customized. 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.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display 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 settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
Widget Customizer Section
Depending on which WordPress theme you have installed, you can also preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with what you have done before committing anything to your site.
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 before publishing changes (and avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize feature)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do several edits to widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and moving widgets around), and this will all be done in real time. If you are happy with the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly updated and made visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display your new configuration to your site visitors.
Since the theme you use tend to affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar section.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to configure various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial about using WordPress widgets.
Click here to continue:
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