As we’ve discussed in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress CMS platform is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website, and reorganize the site’s layout without requiring any web coding skills.
WordPress lets you easily add, delete, and manage content in your blog’s sidebar navigation section (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) 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 you have installed) like:
- page lists
- blog categories
- post archives
- customized menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- post comments
- advertising banners
- customer testimonials
- survey results
- RSS content excerpts
- newsletter registration form
- video galleries
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and why they make managing your site easier, go here:
In this tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before we begin configuring and using widgets, let’s first explain some of the basic concepts about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added to, such as the sidebar menu, header area, and the footer area. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can also appear inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widgetized sections)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets with drag & drop ease)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become activated for use on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove widgets just by dragging and dropping items from your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
If we look inside this site’s Widget area, you will see that these features display on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the active widget area …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of these items around …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in your site’s sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar navigation section, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar
Removing widgets from the sidebar menu is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete your WP widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove widgets)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets offer a number of settings that allow you to further configure these. 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 …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, delete your 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 something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizing options)
Previewing Widgets
Depending on the WP theme you choose, you can also 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 making any permanent changes to your site.
The ability to manage widgets from within your own 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 (to avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer area in the back-end.
You can do many edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will be instantly applied and made visible on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Since the theme you choose tend to affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar navigation menu.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you complete this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to start configuring a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this series of tutorials.
To continue, click here:
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