As we have explained in this article, there are so many great benefits in choosing WordPress to build and manage a digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, and rearrange your site’s layout with no programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and manage various types of content in your site’s sidebar (or 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’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the WordPress theme you have installed) like:
- index of pages
- post categories
- post archives
- custom menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- clickable ad banners
- quotations
- polls & surveys
- RSS content
- registration box
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial we will show you how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s explain some of the basics about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in your theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme, widgets can also get added in the content area …
(Many WP themes offer users multiple widget areas)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag & drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become active.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets using drag & drop inside your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
You can also easily reorder the layout and order of your theme’s widget-ready layout using drag & drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress 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 screen …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the order of items in your site’s 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 at the top of the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) is placed above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar Menu
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar navigation section is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from your sidebar section …
(Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete a WordPress widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar menu. You can always restore widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions 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 …
(Toggles 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 offer little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending upon the theme you choose, 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 your customizations before committing anything 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 your widget content will appear prior to publishing it (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer area in the backend.
You can do many things to widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will be instantly applied and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving your changes, the new updates will automatically be displayed on your site.
Since 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 will save 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, the next step is to learn how to configure a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
***
This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials.
Click on this link to continue reading:
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***