As discussed in this article, one of the many benefits of using WordPress is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality, and reconfigure the site’s layout with no coding skills and knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily add, delete, and reorganize content on your blog’s sidebar (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on your site) 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) like:
- site pages
- blog post categories
- blog post archive
- menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- comments
- clickable text ads
- quotations
- polls & surveys
- RSS feed content
- newsletter registration form
- product catalog images
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from external 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 they work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we are going to show you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s make sure that you understand some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar navigation area, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also be used in the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widget-enabled areas)
These widgetized layouts correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately active and available for use.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Rearrange Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets by dragging and dropping items from 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 display things on your site like:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the back-end widget section …
If we rearrange the order of the above widgets in the Widget Area by dragging & dropping some things around …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in the sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve your site’s 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’ banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve user experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar Section
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar section is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete an active widget, either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing a widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from your sidebar. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This includes 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 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, 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 may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no customization)
Widget Previews
Depending upon which theme you are using, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before making any permanent changes to your website.
The ability to manage widgets from your own 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 it (to avoid making mistakes), or change 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 link in the toolbar)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do many things to the widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and everything is done in real time. If you are happy with the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will then be instantly applied and made visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved your changes, WordPress will automatically update the widget settings and display your new changes to your site visitors.
Since the theme you use can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar navigation menu.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to start configuring various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of section one of this series of tutorials about how to use Widgets.
Click here to continue reading:
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"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
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