As we discuss in this post, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress web publishing tool to manage and grow your website is that you can easily add content, enhance your website, and reconfigure the layout of your website without web coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily add, remove, and reorganize various blocks of content on your blog’s sidebar (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) 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 your theme) like:
- website page list
- site categories
- archived blog posts
- customized menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- post comments
- text ads
- client testimonials
- surveys & polls
- RSS content excerpts
- newsletter subscription form
- product catalog images
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s make sure that you understand some of the basics about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also be found in the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget sections)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Panel
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available for use on your site.
The Widgets panel 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 pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets Using 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 in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reconfigure the order and layout of your website’s widgetized sections using drag-and-drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’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 look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets are arranged in the active widget section …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar navigation section, and the ‘contact us’ graphic button (2) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your Sidebar
Removing widgets from the sidebar menu is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(How to delete WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Removing your WP widgets)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from your sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. This can include things like hiding information from 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 display the widget’s settings …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to 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 offer little to no customizing options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizable options)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending upon the WordPress theme you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before committing anything live 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 the widget content will appear before publishing it (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do several edits to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing 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 then be instantly updated and made visible on the blog’s frontend.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving the changes, WordPress will automatically update the widget settings and display your latest changes to your site visitors.
Since the WordPress theme you choose determines how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on the 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, the next step is to learn how to start configuring various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial series on how to use Widgets.
Click here to continue:
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