As discussed in this post, there are so many great benefits in using the WordPress web publishing tool to build and grow your website. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your website, and reconfigure the layout of your site with no coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to easily insert, remove, and manage various blocks of content from your blog’s sidebar navigation area (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on the site) 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:
- site pages
- site categories
- archives
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- text ads
- user testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed content
- subscriber form
- video galleries
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this tutorial series we show you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using WordPress Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before we start configuring and using widgets, it helps to first go over some of the basics of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in your theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can also appear inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-ready sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
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. immediately become available for use.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets Using Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete things using widgets by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange your theme’s layout with drag and drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
If we look inside this site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget area …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar navigation menu …
This instantly reorganizes the layout of the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar navigation area is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar section …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove your WordPress widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar menu. You can always reactivate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further configure your site features. 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 expands the item and displays the widget’s settings …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove the 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 an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Previewing Widgets
Depending on which theme you use, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing anything to your website or blog.
Widget management 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 (and avoid making mistakes), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the backend.
You can do many modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and everything is done in real time. If you like what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will be instantly updated and reflected on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving the changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar navigation section.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your 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 begin configuring a number of frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click here:
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"I was absolutely amazed at the scope and breadth of these tutorials! The most in-depth training I have ever received on any subject!" - Myke O'Neill, DailyGreenPost.com
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