As we discuss in this article, there are loads of great benefits in using the WordPress web publishing application to build, manage and grow a digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, and rearrange your site’s layout without requiring any coding skills and knowledge.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and manage content on your website’s sidebar navigation menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- website page list
- blog categories
- archive
- custom page menus
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- user comments
- advertising banners
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS content
- opt-in form
- product images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Twitter)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial series you will learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
The Basics
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s first explain some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme, widgets can sometimes also get added inside the content area …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-ready sections)
These widget-ready layouts correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active.
Your Widgets panel 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 retain their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside the Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder the layout of your widget-ready layout with drag-and-drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as they were arranged in the active widget area …
If we change the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the ‘contact us’ graphic banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your Sidebar Section
Removing widgets from the sidebar navigation section is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove a widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from your sidebar area. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be further customized. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access to registered users), displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget expands the item and displays the settings for that widget …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)
Widget Customizer Section
Depending on the theme you choose, you’re also able to customize and manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with what you have done before committing anything live to your website.
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 prior to publishing changes (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the back-end.
You can do lots of edits and adjustments to the widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and moving widgets around), and it’s all done in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will be instantly applied and made visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving the changes, the new configuration will automatically show on your site.
Since the theme you use can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to start configuring a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial.
Click on this link to continue:
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