As we’ve discussed in this post, there are lots of great benefits in using WordPress for building and managing a website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website, or reconfigure the layout of your site without web programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, delete, and reconfigure various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar (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:
- index of pages
- post categories
- blog post archive
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- user comments
- clickable ad banners
- testimonials
- poll questions & results
- RSS feed items
- subscriber form
- video galleries
- social media buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WP widgets are, how widgets work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial we teach you how to use and configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first review some of the basics of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widget-ready areas in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar navigation area, header area, and the footer area. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can also be used in the content area …
(Many WordPress themes offer users a number of widgetized sections)
These widgetized layouts correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that can be used 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 & drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately available for use.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Rearrange WordPress Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets by dragging and dropping items from the Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reorder the layout of your site’s widget-ready sections by dragging and dropping widgets.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- ’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 display on your WordPress site)
If you look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Widget Area by dragging and dropping items …
(Drag & drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in the site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the support image button (2) has been moved to the place above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Blog Sidebar Menu
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar navigation area …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …
(How to delete a widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be further customized. This can include things like hiding information from 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 toggle between expanding and collapsing the item …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets give you little to no customizing options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
WP Theme Customizer
Depending on the theme you are using, you can also customize and manage your widgets 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 website.
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 you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes live in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer section in the back-end.
You can do lots of edits, modifications and adjustments 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 then be instantly updated and reflected on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
After saving changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display the latest changes to your site visitors.
Since the theme you choose affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through 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, it’s time to learn how to begin configuring various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial on how to use WordPress widgets.
Click here to continue:
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"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
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