As we have discussed in this post, there are so many great benefits in choosing WordPress for building and managing a website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website, and reconfigure the layout of your website without the need to have code editing skills or knowledge.
WordPress allows you to easily insert, delete, and reorganize content on your blog’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 like:
- website page list
- content categories
- archived content posts
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- recent comments from users
- advertisements
- client testimonials
- surveys
- RSS content excerpts
- opt-in form
- videos
- social media buttons
- display 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 WordPress widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this tutorial series you will learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
The Basics
Before we get into configuring and using widgets, let’s go over some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widget-ready areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added, such as the sidebar section, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme, widgets can also be added inside the content area …
(Many themes provide a number of widget-enabled sections)
These widget-ready layouts correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets you have available.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active and available for use on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder the order of your website’s widget-enabled areas by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
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 were arranged in the active widget area …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ image banner (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar section …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting a WP widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This can include things like hiding information from users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the widget’s settings …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configurable options)
Preview Widgets
Depending on the theme you use, 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 live 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 mistakes), or change 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 front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do many things 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 instantly become available on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display the new configuration to your site visitors.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you complete this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to start configuring a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial about how to use WordPress widgets.
Click here to continue reading:
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