As we have discussed in this post, one of the many benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, or reorganize your site’s layout with no code editing skills and knowledge required.
WordPress lets you easily insert, delete, and reconfigure various types of content on your site’s sidebar (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you have installed) 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 you have installed) like:
- website page list
- post categories
- archives
- menus that display only the pages you select
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- advertising banners
- user testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- shopping cart forms
- images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Twitter)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s functionality, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial we are going to show you how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first cover some of the basics of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar area, header area, and the footer area. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also show up below or above the content area …
(Many themes provide multiple widgetized areas)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays a list of 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 with drag and drop ease)
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. become immediately active and available for use on your site.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside the Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the layout of your site’s widgetized sections using drag & drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the backend widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(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 reorganizes the order of items in the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help 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 menu, and the support image banner (2) is now placed above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Section
Deleting widgets from your sidebar navigation section is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove your WordPress widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to toggle between expanding and collapsing the item …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove your 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 an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configurable options)
Preview Your Widgets
Depending on which theme you choose, you’re also able to manage your widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before making any permanent changes to your site.
Widget management 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 (and avoid making mistakes), 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 frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do many edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
As soon as the changes have been saved, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing 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 complete this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how your changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to begin configuring a number of frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial on how to use WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to keep reading:
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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