There are so many great benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform for building, managing and growing your business online. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout without coding skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and rearrange various blocks of content in your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this post you will learn how WP widgets work, what makes them so useful and how widgets can be used to add new functionality to your website.
WP Widget: A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For Newbies
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WP widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a script or menu item to your website or blog.
The WordPress application is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to program code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds too geeky. As will soon see, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
With widgets, you don’t have to know how to program PHP or manipulate PHP code to enhance your site.
(WP widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without having to touch code)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way of giving WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily add, edit and remove blocks of code to certain parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the additional components you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- site pages
- post categories
- post archives
- custom page menus
- links to external sites
- your most read posts
- recent comments from users
- clickable ads
- customer testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS content
- newsletter subscription form
- images
- social media buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide an overview of plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how these can easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even change the whole design of your site.
As you will learn in just a moment, themes affect how widgets work on your web site and many plugins also install accompanying widgets that will enhance your website or blog’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Usually, features controlled by widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be found in the header area, footer, and even below the content.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes only have one widget-ready area)
Here is the widget panel of the above theme, so you can see that this specific theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only area where users can add widgets to their site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of different widgetized areas …
(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widgetized sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of 2 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 area)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets panel is located inside your administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and available on your site.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
By default, 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new plugins are installed on your website or blog, you may find that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them all inside your Widgets section just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
Drag & drop technology lets you easily reconfigure the order of your site’s widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
If you were to peek inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the site’s active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
Here are some more things about using WP widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – WordPress Theme Customizer
Depending on the actual WP theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do many modifications and adjustments in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve 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 your WP dashboard is a valuable 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 (to avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can completely rearrange how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor 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 site’s templates to reorganize the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add features like a nested list of pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, an archives section, custom menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most read posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying clickable ads, testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS content excerpts, product catalog images, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizing options)
Many widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further customize them. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customization!)
Using Widgets
As we have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of cool tips on how to get 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 build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP CMS software please see our related posts section.
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"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
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