There are so many great benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform to build, manage and grow your website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and rearrange your site’s layout without having programming skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, remove, and manage various types of content from your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
In this article you will learn what widgets are, why they make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help you grow your site.
What Is A WordPress Widget? An Overview Of Widgets For Beginners
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A WordPress widget is a self-contained block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a script or menu item to your website or blog.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to learn how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As will soon learn, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
WP widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without requiring coding skills.
(WP widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, a widget allows you to:
- Easily add, edit and remove sections of code to areas of your website without having to touch any web code, and
- Rearrange how various elements display on ”widgetized” areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the great things you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- list of pages
- post categories
- blog post archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- post comments
- advertising banners
- user testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscriber form
- image galleries
- social media buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we provide an overview of plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these easily add new functionality to WordPress and even change the whole design of your website or blog.
As you will soon learn, themes affect how widgets display on your website and many plugins also come with accompanying widgets that will help further fine-tune your website’s usability.
Widgetized Areas
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Usually, widgets can be found in your sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be located in your site’s header, in the footer area, sometimes even below the content.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WordPress themes have only one widget-ready area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see that this specific WordPress theme only includes one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains various widgetized areas …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-ready areas)
Below is the widget panel of the theme shown above, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Can I See My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets panel is located inside the admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets screen displays a list of all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active on your site.
In addition, your Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets (e.g. widgets for displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …) and active widgets.
These widgets are available in your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new WP plugins are installed on your website, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them within your Widgets section using drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
With drag & drop technology you can easily reorder the order and layout of your website’s widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features appear on your WordPress site)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in their active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the layout of your sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Here are a few other useful things worth keeping in mind with WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the actual theme that you have installed, you can also customize and manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to your live website.
You can do lots of edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done in real time. If you like what you have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
Widget management 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 before publishing changes (and avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained previously, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how content is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the layout in the site’s sidebar section by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most static websites, you would need to edit code in your web templates to reorganize the order of elements, customize features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add things like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, an archive section, custom menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying text ads, quotations or survey questions & results, RSS feed content, product catalog images, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no configurable options)
Most widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further customize them. 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 information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets give you configuration options!)
Using Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various types of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your site, plus lots of useful tips for getting the most benefit out of WordPress using widgets:
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 1
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 2
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 4
Related Posts
If you are a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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