As we’ve explained in this article, one of the many benefits of using the WordPress CMS platform is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website, or reorganize your site’s layout with no web programming skills required.
WordPress lets you easily add, delete, and manage various blocks of content from your website’s sidebar (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on the site) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- list of your web pages
- categories
- post archives
- menus that display only the pages you choose
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to your posts
- clickable images
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS feed items
- opt-in form
- product catalog images
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how they work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use WordPress Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s go over some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also be used in the content area …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widget sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active.
The Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets with drag and drop inside your Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder the layout of your website’s widgetized layout by dragging & dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
If you look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget area …
Let’s now rearrange these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar, and the support banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Area
Removing widgets from your sidebar navigation section is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar navigation section …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete your widgets)
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 other widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible 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 display the widget’s settings …
(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 give you little to no configuration options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customization)
Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the theme you are using, 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.
The ability to manage widgets from your WP 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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer screen in the backend.
You can do several edits to the widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and this 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 your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving changes, the new updates will automatically show on your site.
Because the theme you use affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to begin configuring various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials about how to use WordPress widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click this link:
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