As we have explained in this post, one of the many benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, enhance your site’s functionality, or reconfigure the layout of your site without web coding knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily add, remove, and control content from your blog’s sidebar (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) like:
- list of your web pages
- content categories
- archives
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- your most popular posts
- user comments
- clickable ads
- quotations
- surveys
- content from RSS feeds
- subscriber form
- video galleries
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s functionality, see this article:
In this tutorial we show you how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets In WordPress
The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s cover some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can also display below or above the content area …
(Many themes provide a number of widgetized areas)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag & 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. become active and can be used to perform their function on your site.
Your Widgets screen 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 settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets Using Drag & Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets by dragging and dropping items from the Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout by using drag-and-drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ function 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)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features appear on the site’s sidebar area in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the backend widget area …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of these items around …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar area, and the support graphic button (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Navigation Area
Deleting widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Deleting WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove your widgets)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want removed from your sidebar navigation area. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further configure things. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, 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 the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configurable options)
Widget Previews
Depending on which WP theme you use, you can also customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before making any permanent changes to your site.
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 (to avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(Edit widgets in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do many edits to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will be instantly updated and made visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display your new configuration to your site visitors.
Since the WordPress theme you choose affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing your theme first before configuring widgets.
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 (one to work in and one to check how the changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to begin configuring various frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this series of tutorials on using WordPress widgets.
Click on this link to continue:
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