As we’ve discussed in this post, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, improve your site’s functionality, and redesign the layout of your site without web coding knowledge required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, remove, and reconfigure content in your site’s sidebar navigation menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- nested page lists
- blog categories
- archived blog post entries
- custom menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- image banners
- quotations
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed items
- opt-in subscription form
- images
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how they work and why they make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we teach you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using Widgets
Widgets – The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first make sure that you understand some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Many 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 what theme you are using, widgets can also be found inside the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widget-enabled sections)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets you have available.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout using drag-and-drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget section …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar navigation section …
This immediately changes the order of items in your site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar, and the support banner (2) is now found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your Sidebar
Removing widgets from the sidebar navigation area is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing a WordPress widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further configure these. This can include things like hiding information from 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 widget’s settings …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configurable options)
Customize Widgets Section
Depending on which theme you are using, you can also manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before committing anything to your site.
The ability to manage widgets inside the dashboard 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 (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer area in the back-end.
You can do several edits and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will be instantly applied and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving the changes, your new configuration will automatically be added to your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar navigation section.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial on how to use WordPress widgets.
Click here to view the rest of this tutorial:
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"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)
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