As we explain in this post, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress web publishing software for building, managing and growing a digital presence is that you can easily add content, enhance your website, or reorganize the layout of your site without the need to have web coding skills or knowledge.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and manage content from your site’s sidebar area (or header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) 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 the theme) like:
- site pages
- content categories
- blog post archive
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- most popular posts
- recent comments from users
- image banners
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- RSS feed items
- subscriber form
- videos
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial we explain how to use and configure a number of commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s explain some of the basics about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme, widgets can also show up inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widgetized areas)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag & drop ease)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become available for use.
The Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag & Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete things using widgets by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout using drag-and-drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
If you were to peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget area …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar menu …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can 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 navigation menu, and the support graphic button (2) is now located above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar menu …
(Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete your WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets provide additional settings that allow you to further customize them. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible 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 toggles between expanding and collapsing the item and displays the widget’s settings …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to delete 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 something like an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending on the WP theme you choose, you’re also able to preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before committing anything live to your website or blog.
The ability to manage widgets inside your dashboard is a great feature of WordPress. You can work in preview mode inside the WordPress Theme Customizer screen (Appearance > Customize) and see how the widget content will appear prior to publishing changes (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This brings you to the Customizer area in the backend.
You can do lots of modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on the blog’s frontend.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
Once you have saved your changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display your latest changes to your site visitors.
Since the WordPress theme you use can 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 all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure various commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial.
Click on this link to continue:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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