As we explain in this article, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress to manage and grow your website or blog is that you can easily add content, enhance your site’s functionality, or redesign the layout of your site with no web coding knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to easily insert, delete, and control various types of content on your website’s sidebar (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- nested page lists
- categories
- archived blog post entries
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- your most read posts
- post comments
- clickable ads
- testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- newsletter subscription form
- images
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Amazon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how they work and why they make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial series we teach you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use Widgets
Widgets – Basic Concepts
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s first go over some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar navigation section, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also get added inside the content area …
(Many themes provide a number of widget sections)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Panel
The Widgets section 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 & drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become available for use.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete widgets by dragging and dropping items from the Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout by with drag & drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
If we take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features display on the site in the same order as they are arranged in the active widget area …
Let’s now rearrange the order of these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar section …
This instantly reorganizes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From The Sidebar
Removing widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(Search widget)
To remove an active widget, either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from your sidebar menu. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be further customized. This can include things like hiding information from users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions 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 …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, delete the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no customizing options)
Preview Your Widgets
Depending upon which WP theme you choose, you can also customize 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 prior to publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live 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 link in the toolbar)
This will bring you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do several edits to your widgets in preview mode (like adding, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will then be instantly updated and made visible to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once the changes are saved, the new updates will automatically be displayed on your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to see the site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to begin configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial series.
To view Part Two, click this link:
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