As we have discussed in this article, one of the many benefits of using WordPress to manage and grow your web presence is that you can easily add content, improve your site’s functionality, or redesign the layout of your website with no web coding knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, delete, and manage content in your site’s sidebar navigation menu (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:
- site pages
- blog post categories
- post archives
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to your posts
- clickable images
- quotations
- polls & surveys
- content from RSS feeds
- newsletter subscription form
- video thumbnails
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial series you will learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
Widgets – The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s make sure that you understand some of the basics about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also be added below or above the content area …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging and dropping)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately active and can be used for their purpose.
In addition, your Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to use on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets using simple drag & drop inside your Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the order and layout of your widgetized sections using drag-and-drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A ‘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 display)
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 area …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the layout of the sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar area, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) is placed above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Removing widgets from your sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(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 …
(Delete a widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from your sidebar. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be further customized. This can include things like hiding information from 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 expands 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, remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets provide users with little to no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no customization)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending on which WordPress theme you use, you’re also able to 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 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 (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the back-end.
You can do plenty of edits, modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like adding, deleting and moving widgets around), and this will all be done in real time. If you are happy with what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible on the blog’s frontend.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving the changes, your new configuration will automatically show on your site.
Since the theme you use determines how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all 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, let’s configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial.
Click here to continue:
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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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