As we have discussed in this article, there are lots of great benefits in using the WordPress web publishing application to build and grow a business online. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website, or rearrange your site’s layout with no web coding skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily add, remove, and reorganize various types of content on your site’s sidebar area (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) 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
- blog categories
- archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to your posts
- clickable ads
- testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- shopping cart information
- product catalog images
- social media share buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(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, go here:
In this tutorial series we teach you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using Widgets In WordPress
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first review some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in your theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar navigation menu, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also be found below or above the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays all the widgets you have available.
The right-hand section of the window displays all “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used for their purpose.
In addition, your Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag & Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and remove widgets by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily rearrange 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 subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
If we take a look inside this site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget section …
If we change these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the order of items in your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) is now found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Area
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(How to delete a WordPress widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove a widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from your sidebar navigation section. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be further customized. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget toggles between expanding and collapsing the item and displays the settings for that widget …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, delete the 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 something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configurable options)
Widget Previews
Depending upon which theme you have installed on your site, you can also customize widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before committing anything live to your site.
The ability to manage widgets from the dashboard is a great 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 prior to publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets 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 screen in the backend.
You can do many things to the widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting 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 then be instantly updated and made visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, your new updates will automatically be added to your site.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar navigation section.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all 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, the next step is to learn how to configure various frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
***
This is the end of section one of this tutorial on how to use Widgets.
Click here to access Part Two:
***
"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
***