There are lots of great things about using the WordPress web publishing software to build and manage your website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your site with no web programming skills or knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, remove, and reconfigure various blocks of content in your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
This post explains how widgets work, why widgets can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can be used to expand the functionality of your website or blog.
How Do WordPress Widgets Work? Understanding WordPress Widgets For Website Owners
(WordPress widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WordPress widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a text box or menu item to your site.
The WordPress software is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to write web code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds too technical. As will soon see, WP widgets are made for non-techies.
Widgets eliminate the need to know how to write code or manipulate PHP code in order to customize your website.
(WP widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your website without having to edit code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget allows you to:
- Easily add, edit and delete functions in areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any underlying code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your WordPress theme on ”widgetized” areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the many additional components you can add to your WP site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WordPress widgets:
- nested page lists
- site categories
- archives
- menus
- links to external sites
- your most popular posts
- recent comments
- advertising
- testimonials
- survey questions & results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscription form
- video galleries
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add new features to WordPress and alter the whole look and feel of your website.
As you will see shortly, themes affect how widgets display on your web site and some plugins also install accompanying widgets that will help further enhance your website or blog’s performance.
Widgetized Themes
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections on your site where you can add widgets to.
Normally, you will find features driven by widgets in the sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be located in the header section, the footer area, and even below or above the content section.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes only provide one widgetized area)
Here is the widget screen of the theme shown above, and you can see that this particular theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your site using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown below contains various widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-enabled sections)
Below is the widget section of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas are included in the WordPress theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets 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 section)
How Can I See My WP Widgets?
The Widgets screen is found within the WP dashboard and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen 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 panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
In a default WordPress installation, 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 right out of the box in the default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Meta, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them from your Widgets section just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)
Using drag and drop technology lets you easily reconfigure the order and layout of your widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your site)
If you were to peek inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the active widget area …
If we rearrange the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This immediately changes the order of items in the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic button (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Here are a few other useful things about widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the theme that you have installed, you can also manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing any changes to the live website.
You can do a number of edits and adjustments in preview mode, like adding, removing and moving around your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is done 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 on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from your WordPress 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 prior to publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you completely rearrange how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the layout in the site’s sidebar section by switching 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.
Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve user 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 web templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like user registration areas, or just add features like a list of pages on your website, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, an archived blog posts section, custom menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most read posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable images, testimonials or survey questions & results, RSS feed content, video galleries, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no configurable options)
Many widgets offer additional settings that allow you to further customize them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets provide users with configurable options!)
How To Use WordPress Widgets
As we have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of cool tips for getting the most out of WordPress using 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.
***
"I love the way your email series "Infinite Web Content Creation Training Series" is documented and presented. It is very absorbing and captivating. The links and tutorials are interesting and educational. This has motivated me to rewrite my content following the concepts I am learning from the email series." - Mani Raju, www.fortuneinewaste.com
***