As we have discussed in this post, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress web publishing tool to build and grow a website is that you can easily add content, enhance your website, or reorganize your site’s layout without having any code editing skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, delete, and reorganize various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar area (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- pages on your site
- blog categories
- blog post archive
- menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- recent comments
- text ads
- testimonials
- surveys
- RSS content excerpts
- subscription form
- images
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
The Basics
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, let’s cover some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also appear in the content area …
(Many themes provide multiple widgetized sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets just by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reorder the order of your widgetized sections using drag & drop.
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 banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the back-end widget section …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping some things around …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the layout of the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation section, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your Sidebar
Removing widgets from your sidebar section is very easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from your sidebar menu …
(Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, you can either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete a WordPress widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove your widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from the sidebar. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access to registered users), displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget expands the item and displays the widget’s settings …
(Toggle to expand/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 …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets provide users with little to no customizing options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
Customize Widgets Section
Depending upon the WordPress theme you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before making any permanent changes to your website.
The ability to manage widgets from within your WordPress 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 (to avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This brings you to the Customizer area in the backend.
You can do several edits and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once your changes have been saved, your new settings will automatically be displayed on your site.
Since the WordPress theme you choose determines how elements display on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your 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, let’s start configuring various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial series on how to use Widgets.
Click here to continue:
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