As we have discussed in this post, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress to manage and grow your website or blog is that you can easily add content, improve your site’s functionality, and reconfigure the layout of your website with no web coding skills required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange content from your website’s sidebar area (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme is installed on your 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 your theme) like:
- list of your web pages
- site categories
- blog post archive
- menus
- links to external sites
- your most popular posts
- recent comments from users
- clickable text ads
- quotations
- poll questions & results
- RSS content excerpts
- subscriber form
- images
- social media buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s capabilities, go here:
In this tutorial series we explain how to use and configure various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets In WordPress
The Basics
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s explain some of the basics about using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also show up inside the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-enabled sections)
These widget-ready layouts correspond to a feature inside your Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Your Widgets Screen
The Widgets area displays all the widgets you have available.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see the “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging and dropping)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active and available for use.
In addition, your Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Rearrange Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete widgets just by dragging and dropping items inside the Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily rearrange the order and layout of your theme’s widget-enabled sections with drag & drop ease.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the backend widget section …
Let’s now rearrange the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging & dropping some of the items around …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the support graphic button (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation Menu
Deleting widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Removing a WordPress widget)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always reactivate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be further customized. This can include things like hiding information from users (but allowing access 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 …
(Toggle to expand/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 settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets provide users with little to no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending on the WordPress theme you are using, you can also customize and manage your widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before making any permanent changes to your website or blog.
The ability to manage widgets inside the WP dashboard is a great 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 change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize feature)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize link in the toolbar)
This brings you to the Customizer area in the backend.
You can do lots of edits and adjustments to widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and moving widgets around), and everything is done in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become available to your site visitors.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving 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 menu.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to see the site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to start configuring various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this series of tutorials.
To continue, click this link:
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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