As we’ve explained in this post, one of the many benefits of using the WordPress web publishing application for building and growing your website or blog is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, or rearrange the layout of your website without programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, remove, and reorganize various types of content from your blog’s sidebar (and 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:
- pages on your website
- post categories
- post archives
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- comments
- clickable ads
- testimonials
- poll results
- content from RSS feeds
- member login section
- video
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets 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 your site’s capabilities, see this article:
In this tutorial you will learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
The Basics
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, let’s go over some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widgetized sections in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on your theme, widgets can also be found below or above the content area …
(Many WordPress themes offer users a number of widgetized sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets area displays all the widgets you can use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays all “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets by dragging and dropping)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become available for use on your site.
The Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use 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, and activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items from the Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the order of your widget-ready areas with drag & drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
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 section …
Let’s now change the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar navigation section …
This immediately changes the layout of your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar navigation menu, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s user experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar section is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar navigation section …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete an active widget, either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove your widgets)
Repeat this process for any other 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 provide a number of options that allow you to further configure things. This can include things like hiding information from 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 …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to 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 offer little to no configurable options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizing options)
Widget Customizer Section
Depending on which WordPress theme you choose, you’re also able to manage and customize widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with what you see before making any permanent changes 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 prior to publishing it (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
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 feature in the backend.
You can do many edits, modifications 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 your changes will be instantly updated and made visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After your changes have been saved, the new updates will automatically show on your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar navigation menu.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all 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, let’s configure various commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
***
This is the end of section one of this series of tutorials.
To view Part 2, click here:
***
"I am beyond impressed with what you have put together. I can tell that you put a ton of hard work into building what you have. You have the absolute best content on WordPress I have ever seen!" - Robert T. Jillie
***