As discussed in this post, one of the many benefits of choosing WordPress is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website, or reconfigure the layout of your website with no programming skills or knowledge required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and manage various types of content on your site’s sidebar section (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 like:
- website page list
- site categories
- archived content posts
- custom menus
- links to resources
- your most popular posts
- user comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS content
- newsletter registration form
- video galleries
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Amazon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial we teach you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use Widgets In WordPress
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, let’s first make sure that you understand some of the basics about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in your theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also appear in the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-enabled sections)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets you can use on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays the “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 the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets using drag and drop inside your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange the order of your widgetized layout by dragging & dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your site)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the back-end widget section …
Let’s now rearrange the order of the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of the elements around …
(Drag & drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in the sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation area, and the support banner (2) has been moved to the place above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from your sidebar section …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete a widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from the sidebar. You can always reactivate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets provide various settings that allow you to further configure things. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access 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 expands 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, 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 give you little to no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Theme Customizer
Depending upon which theme you use, you’re also able to preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like what you have done before making any permanent changes to your website or blog.
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 prior to publishing changes (to avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the back-end.
You can do several edits to the widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and it will all be done in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become available on the site’s frontend.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once your changes are saved, 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 area.
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 (one to work in and one to check how the changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to configure various frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial about using Widgets.
Click here to view Part Two:
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