There are loads of great benefits to using the WordPress web publishing tool to manage and grow a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and reconfigure your site’s layout without programming skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, delete, and rearrange various types of content from your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This article explains what widgets are, why they can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to grow your website.
About WordPress Widgets: An Overview Of Widgets For Beginners
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WP widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a text box or list item to your website or blog.
The WordPress software is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As will soon learn, widgets are made for non-technical users.
With widgets, users don’t need to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code in order to customize their website.
(WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without having to edit code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and remove features in parts of your website without touching 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 many functions you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WP widgets:
- page lists
- categories
- archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- recent comments
- image banners
- quotations
- survey results
- RSS feed content
- subscriber form
- videos
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we provide detailed content about WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add loads of new functionality to WordPress and even change the design of your website.
As you will see in a moment, WordPress themes affect how widgets display on your site and some plugins also come with accompanying widgets that can fine tune your site’s capabilities.
Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections on your site where widgets can appear.
Typically, you will find widgets at work in the sidebar, but depending on the theme, these can also be found in the header section, the footer, even below or above your content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes provide only a single widget enabled section)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see that this specific theme only includes one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only location where you can add widgets to your website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below includes multiple widget areas …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widget-enabled areas)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas this specific theme includes …
(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 Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets area is found within the WordPress administration area and can be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
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 activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately 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 use on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose 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, Archives, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new plugins are installed on your site, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all in your Widgets area using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Drag and drop technology lets you easily reconfigure the order of your site’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 newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the site’s active widget section …
Let’s now change 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 widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This instantly reorganizes the order of items in your sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic button (2) is placed above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty cool stuff, huh?
Let’s go over some other things worth knowing about WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Theme Customizer
Depending on the actual theme that you have installed, you’re also able to 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 these changes to your live website.
You can do many edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes 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!)
The ability to manage widgets from within your own 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 it (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorder how information displays in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have reorganized the site’s sidebar 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.
Rearrange 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 many static websites, you would need to edit code in the web templates to rearrange the order of elements, customize features on page elements like subscriber forms, or just add things like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, a blog post archive section, customized menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most read posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying clickable ads, customer testimonials or polls & surveys, RSS feed content, product images, social media buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
Most widgets provide additional settings that allow you to further configure these. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to 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 configuration options!)
How To Use Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WP website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use various kinds of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress web content publishing platform please see 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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