There are lots of great things about choosing the WordPress CMS platform to build and grow your web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your site without web programming skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and control various blocks of content in your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this post you will learn how WordPress widgets work, why they make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help to improve the functionality of your website.
What Do Widgets Do? An Introduction To Widgets For Business Website Owners
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WP widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a script or item to your website.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to script PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds too technical. As you are about to discover, widgets are made for non-techies.
WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without the need to touch code.
(WP widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without having to mess with code)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily add, edit and delete blocks of code to certain areas of your site without having to touch any underlying code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the functionality you can add to your WP site’s sidebar area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- page lists
- blog categories
- archives
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- advertisements
- quotations
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- opt-in subscription form
- video galleries
- social media sharing buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we write more extensively about WP plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even alter the entire look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will learn in a moment, themes affect where widgets display on your web site and some plugins add accompanying widgets that will further fine-tune your site’s capabilities.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where you can have widgets in.
Typically, widgets can be found in your sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be found in the site’s header section, in the footer area, sometimes even above or below your content section.
It all depends on the theme you have installed.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area adding functionality to the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes only have one widget enabled section)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, so you can see that the theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only location where you can add widgets to your website using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below contains various widget areas …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget-ready areas)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the above theme, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets section go to Appearance > Widgets …
This opens the Widgets screen in your browser window …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available on your site.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets retain their 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 Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets display in your Widgets area as new plugins are installed on your site …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them within your Widgets area using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Use drag-and-drop to easily reorder the layout and order of your website’s widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features appear on your WordPress site)
Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now change the above widgets in the Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This instantly reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Here are some other useful things about using widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending on the actual theme that you have installed, you can also customize your 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 the live website.
You can do several edits and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, removing and moving around your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve 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 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 errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained previously, with WordPress you can quickly reorganize how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the sidebar area by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor 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 the web templates to reorganize the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add other features like a nested list of pages, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archived published posts section, custom page menus, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying clickable text ads, testimonials or survey questions & results, RSS feed content, video thumbnails, social media buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
Many widgets offer additional options that allow you to further customize things. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets provide users with customizable options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your web site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various types of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus many useful tips for getting the most benefit out of WordPress with 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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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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