There are lots of great things about choosing the WordPress web publishing application for building and managing a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your site with no web coding skills and knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and control various types of content in your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this article you will learn how widgets work, why they can make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help you grow your site.
What’s A Widget? An Introduction To Widgets For Business Website Users
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a script or list item to your WordPress site.
The WordPress software is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to learn how to write code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds like geek speak. As will soon see, WordPress widgets are perfect for non-techies.
Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding.
(Widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove content sections in certain areas of your website without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your 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 functionality you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar section (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WP widgets:
- pages on your site
- blog categories
- archive
- custom menus
- links to resources
- most read posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to your posts
- advertisements
- quotations
- polls
- RSS content excerpts
- newsletter registration form
- product catalog images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we write more extensively about WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add new functionality to WordPress and alter the whole design of your site.
As you will soon discover, WordPress themes can affect how widgets display on your site and many plugins also install accompanying widgets that will further improve your website’s usability.
Widgetized Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas on your site where widgets can be added.
Typically, you will find widgets at work in the theme’s sidebar, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be found in the header area, footer, sometimes even below or above the content.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes have only a single widget enabled area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, where you can see that this theme only includes one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only place 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 below includes a number of different widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widgetized areas)
Below is the widget panel of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(Multiple widgets 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 WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Can I See My Widgets?
To access the Widgets area log into your WP administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that are available.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active and available.
The Widgets panel also 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 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new plugins are installed on your site, 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 section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them all inside your Widgets section using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
With drag & drop you can easily reconfigure the layout and order of your widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your WordPress site)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in their active widget area …
Let’s now rearrange the order these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your site’s 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 image button (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
Here are a few other useful things about using WordPress widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Preview Widgets
Depending upon the WordPress theme that you have installed, you’re also able to customize and manage 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 lots of things to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting 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 on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside 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 prior to publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you previously, WordPress lets you easily and quickly reorganize how information displays in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the sidebar area by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, customize features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add things like a list of site pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, an archived published posts section, custom menus, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying image banners, testimonials or polls & surveys, RSS feed content, video galleries, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable 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 provide additional options that allow you to further configure things. 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. and more …
(Most widgets give you configurable options!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your web site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related 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 types of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your site, plus lots of cool tips on how to get 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems 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 or blog 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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