As we discuss in this post, there are loads of benefits in choosing the WordPress CMS platform for building and managing a website. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, and reconfigure the layout of your site without web programming skills and knowledge required.
WordPress lets you easily add, delete, and reorganize content in your website’s sidebar navigation menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- nested list of your web pages
- blog categories
- archives
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- advertisements
- quotations
- poll questions & results
- content from RSS feeds
- newsletter subscription form
- video thumbnails
- social media sharing buttons
- display widgets from other 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 they work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s capabilities, see this article:
In this step-by-step tutorial series we teach you how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
Using WordPress Widgets
The Basics
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, it helps to first go over some of the basic concepts of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on what theme you are using, widgets can sometimes also be added below or above the content area …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget-enabled areas)
These widget-ready areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget management area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets section displays all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see all “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets with drag & drop ease)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become activated for use on your site.
The Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
Rearrange Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete things using widgets using drag & drop in your Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout with drag-and-drop ease.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
If we take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as they are arranged in the active widget area …
If we change the order the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of the items around …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout using widgets can help improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar, and the support graphic banner (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve user experience)
Deleting Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar Section
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar menu is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar …
(Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Deleting WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Removing WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets offer additional options that allow you to further customize these. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the settings for that widget …
(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to 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 may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Preview Your Widgets
Depending upon which WP theme you choose, you’re also able to preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before committing anything to your site.
The ability to manage widgets inside your 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 before publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize section)
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 feature in the back-end.
You can do plenty of edits in preview mode (like adding, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will be instantly updated and made visible on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
As soon as the changes have been saved, the new updates will automatically be added to your site.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This saves 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 configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
***
This is the end of part one of this series of tutorials about using Widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial, click here:
***
"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
***