As we’ve discussed in this article, there are so many great benefits in choosing the WordPress CMS platform for managing and growing a web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, and rearrange the site’s layout without requiring web coding skills or knowledge.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, remove, and reconfigure various types of content from your website’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’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) like:
- site pages
- post categories
- archived blog posts
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- most popular posts
- user comments
- clickable text ads
- quotations
- poll results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscription form
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial series we show you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s review some of the basics of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also display inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-ready sections)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the screen displays the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately available for use.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Reorganize Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete things using widgets with drag and drop in the Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)
You can also easily reorder the layout and order of your theme’s widgetized areas using drag & drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If we look inside this site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar navigation area …
This instantly changes the layout of your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar area, and the support graphic banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Blog Sidebar Menu
Deleting widgets from your sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete your WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it 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.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the widget’s settings …
(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 may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizable options)
Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the WP theme you choose, 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 your customizations before committing anything to your website.
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 any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer screen in the back-end.
You can do several edits, modifications and adjustments to the widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving your changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you complete this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial series.
To view Part 2, click this link:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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