There are loads of benefits to using the WordPress web publishing software to build and grow a business online. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and reconfigure the layout of your website with no code editing skills or knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and manage various types of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this blog post you will learn what widgets are, what makes them so useful and how widgets can help to add functionality to your web site.
Widgets – How Do They Work? An Introduction To Widgets For Website Owners
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
WordPress widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or menu item to your WP site.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to learn how to program web code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too geeky. As you are about to see, widgets are perfect for non-techie website owners.
Widgets don’t require you to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code to enhance your website.
(Widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without having to mess with code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete sections of code to certain areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any web code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your theme 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 many things you can add to your site’s sidebar section (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WordPress widgets:
- page lists
- blog categories
- archives
- menus that display only the pages you select
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- advertising
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- RSS feed items
- newsletter subscription form
- videos
- social media buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we write more extensively about plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add new features to WordPress and change the design of your site.
As you will learn shortly, WordPress themes can affect how widgets display on your web site and some plugins also add accompanying widgets that can improve your website or blog’s usability.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can display.
Normally, widget-powered features can be found in your theme’s sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be located in your site’s header section, footer, even below your content.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WP themes have only one widget-ready area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme shown above, and you can see that the WordPress theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of widget areas …
(Many WP themes provide multiple widget-ready areas)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas this specific theme includes …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
Where Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets area log into your WordPress administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This opens the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see 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. immediately become available for use on your site.
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 website. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
By default, 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Archives, Meta, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets get added to your Widgets section whenever new plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing new WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all inside your Widgets area using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
Using drag & drop technology lets you easily rearrange the layout of your site’s widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
If you were to peek inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as they were arranged in their active widget section …
Let’s now rearrange the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the order of items in the 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 graphic banner (2) has been moved to the place above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty cool, huh?
Let me just show you some other things worth keeping in mind when using widgets:
Widget Management – Customize Widgets Section
Depending upon the actual theme that you have installed, you can also customize and manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do many edits and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and moving around your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done 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 to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from your WordPress dashboard 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 (to avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can completely reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily change the layout in the sidebar area by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can 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 most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the web templates to rearrange the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add things like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your blog post categories, an archives section, menus to display selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertising, customer testimonials or survey results, content from RSS feeds, images, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Most widgets provide additional settings that allow you to further customize them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets offer configuration options!)
Using Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WP site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related 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 web site, plus lots of great 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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