As we’ve discussed in this article, there are many great things about choosing the WordPress CMS platform to manage and grow your web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, or rearrange the site’s layout with no web coding skills or knowledge required.

WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, delete, and reorganize content on your site’s sidebar (and header and footer sections too, 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 like:

• list of your web pages
• blog post categories
• archives
• customized menus
• links to external sites
• links to your recent posts
• user comments
• advertising
• customer testimonials
• surveys
• RSS content
• subscription form
• video thumbnails
• twitter feeds
• add widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
• administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)

(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)

To learn more about what WP widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:

• All You Need To Know About WP Widgets

In this tutorial we teach you how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.

How To Use Widgets In WordPress

What You Need To Know First

Before configuring and using widgets, let’s go over some of the basic concepts of using widgets:

Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas

Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and the footer area. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also be added below or above the content area …

(Many themes provide multiple widgetized sections)

These widget-ready sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …

(Widget Areas)

Your Widgets Screen

The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.

The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …

(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging and dropping)

Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the panel.

Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available for use on your site.

The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.

Reorganize Widgets With Drag-And-Drop

You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and delete things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items in the Widgets section …

(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)

You can also easily reorder the layout of your website’s widget-enabled sections with drag & drop ease.

For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:

1. A newsletter opt-in form,
2. A contact support button, and
3. ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …

(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)

If we take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget area …

If we reorganize these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements …

(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)

The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar navigation section …

As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the order of items in your site’s sidebar.

Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to 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, and the support banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter subscription form (1) …

(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s user experience)

Removing Widgets From Your Sidebar

Removing widgets from your sidebar navigation menu is very easy.

For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from your sidebar navigation area …

(Search widget)

To remove an active widget, either expand the widget and click the Delete link …

(Delete widgets)

Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets section …

(Removing widgets)

Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar navigation menu. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.

Widget Settings

Many widgets provide additional settings that allow you to further customize these. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes 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, click Delete to 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 something like an optional title …

(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)

Widget Customizer Section

Depending upon which theme you have installed on your site, you can also preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before committing anything to your website.

The ability to manage widgets from within your own WordPress 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 it (and avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.

(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)

Wherever you are 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 back-end.

You can do lots of edits 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 the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will be instantly updated and reflected to your site visitors.

(Widget management – work in preview mode)

After the changes are saved, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.

Because the theme you choose tend to affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on your sidebar.

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, it’s time to learn how to start configuring a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.

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This is the end of section one of this series of tutorials.

Click on this link to continue reading:

• How To Use WordPress Widgets – Part 2

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