There are so many great things about choosing the WordPress CMS platform for building, managing and growing your web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your website and reconfigure your site’s layout without requiring coding skills.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange various types of content in your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this article you will learn how WordPress widgets work, what they do and how widgets can be used to add new functionality to your website.
What Are WordPress Widgets? A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For Business Users
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
Widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or menu item to your site.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you need to know how to script web code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds like geek speak. As will soon see, widgets are made for non-techie users.
With WP widgets, users don’t need to know how to write code or manipulate PHP code to enhance the functionality of their website.
(WP widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way of giving WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete functions in areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any underlying code, and
- Rearrange 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 many functions you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- pages on your website
- blog post categories
- archived blog posts
- customized menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- post comments
- advertisements
- quotations
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- newsletter registration form
- video thumbnails
- social media buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Amazon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide more detailed explanations of WordPress plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how these add new functionality to WordPress and alter the whole design of your website.
As you will see in just a moment, WP themes can affect where widgets display on your website and a number of plugins include accompanying widgets that can further extend your website’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Usually, functions managed by widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, these can also be in the header area, the footer area, sometimes even below your content area.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes only provide one widget area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, so you can see that this particular theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only area where you can add widgets to your site using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of different widget areas …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widget-ready sections)
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 specific theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets 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)
Where Can I See My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets screen is found within the WordPress dashboard and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets screen 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 your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become available for use.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new WP plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them within your Widgets section using drag and drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
Use drag-and-drop to easily reconfigure the layout and order of your website’s widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in their active widget section …
If we rearrange these widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the layout of the site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Easy, huh?
Here are a few other useful things about widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending on the theme that you have installed, you can also manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing any changes to your live website.
You can do lots of things in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing your current 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 on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside your WP dashboard 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 any changes (to avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained in an earlier example, with WordPress you can quickly reorder how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar menu by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your web templates to reorganize the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add other features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archived blog posts section, custom menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest excerpts of comments added to your posts, a section displaying advertising, quotations or polls & surveys, content from RSS feeds, product images, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing 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 customization)
Many widgets offer a number of options that allow you to further customize your site features. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets provide users with configurable options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website, plus many cool tips on how to get the most 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website please see other posts we have published on this site.
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