As we discuss in this article, one of the many benefits of using the WordPress web publishing tool for building and growing your website is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website, and reconfigure the layout of your site with no coding skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, delete, and reconfigure various blocks of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) 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 WordPress theme you have installed) like:
- nested page lists
- content categories
- archives
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- post comments
- advertisements
- quotations
- surveys
- content from RSS feeds
- shopping cart information
- product catalog images
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before we show you how to configure widgets, it helps to first cover some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widgetized sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be added, such as the sidebar section, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also be used inside the content area …
(Many WP themes provide a number of widget sections)
These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets you have available.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately active and can be used to perform their function on your site.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets by dragging and dropping items inside the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout using drag and drop.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A ‘click to call’ feature from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site’s sidebar section in the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now change the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping some things around …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar Area
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from your sidebar …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Removing your widget)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized. 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 dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the widget’s settings …
(Toggling expands/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 …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no customizing options)
Widget Previews
Depending on the theme you are using, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before making any permanent changes to your website.
The ability to manage widgets inside the 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 mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do several edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become available on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
As soon as the changes have been saved, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display the latest configuration to your site visitors.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you complete this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how the changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to configure a number of frequently-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial about using Widgets.
Click here to continue:
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