As we have explained in this post, there are so many great things about using the WordPress CMS platform for building and growing a website. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, or rearrange the site’s layout without having any programming skills and knowledge.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, delete, and manage various blocks of content in your website’s sidebar (or header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- list of your web pages
- blog categories
- archive
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- post comments
- advertising banners
- quotations
- poll results
- RSS feed content
- subscriber form
- product catalog images
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:
In this tutorial series we explain how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
The Basics
Before we begin configuring and using widgets, let’s first review some of the basic concepts of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar area, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can also be used below or above the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget areas)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see the “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets with drag & drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become available for use on your site.
In addition, your Widgets panel 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 Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets using drag and drop in the Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout using drag & drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
If you could peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site in the same order as they were arranged in the back-end widget section …
Let’s now change these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar menu …
This immediately reorganizes the order of items in your site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar section, and the support section (2) is now located above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar Area
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from the sidebar …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Removing your widgets)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from your sidebar menu. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be further customized. This includes hiding information from users (but allowing access to registered users), displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to expand the item …
(Toggles expand/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 …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Theme Customizer
Depending upon which theme you have installed, 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 committing anything live to your website.
The ability to manage widgets from within your dashboard is a valuable 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 any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the back-end.
You can do lots of edits, modifications and adjustments to the widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will be instantly applied and made visible on the site’s frontend.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, WordPress will automatically update the widget settings and display the latest changes to your site visitors.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install 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, let’s configure a number of commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial on using WordPress widgets.
To continue, click this link:
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