As we have explained in this article, one of the many benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, and change the layout of your site without web coding knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and reconfigure various types of content from 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 the theme you have installed) like:
- nested page lists
- content categories
- archives
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- polls
- RSS feed items
- opt-in form
- video galleries
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s first explain some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar navigation section, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can sometimes also be found below or above the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-enabled sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets 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 your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and available for use.
The Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and remove widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A ‘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 we 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 rearrange the order of these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of the items around …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar section …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation section, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) now sits above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar menu is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete your widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove a widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reactivate 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 data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the settings for that widget …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove your 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 something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
Preview Widgets
Depending on the WP theme you have installed on your site, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before making any permanent changes to your website.
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 you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets 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 brings you to the Customizer screen in the backend.
You can do a number of things to the widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since the theme you choose can affect how elements display 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 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, let’s start configuring a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial series.
Click on this link to continue:
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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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