As we have discussed in this post, there are many great benefits in choosing the WordPress web publishing tool to manage and grow your website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality, or rearrange the layout of your website without programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, delete, and rearrange content in your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- page lists
- content categories
- post archives
- menus
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- user comments
- clickable ads
- customer testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed items
- shopping cart information
- videos
- social media buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this tutorial series you will learn how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use Widgets
What You Need To Know First
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, it helps to first make sure that you understand some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer sections. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can sometimes also be added in the content area …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget sections)
These widgetized layouts correspond to a feature inside your Widget management panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become available for use on your site.
The Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets using drag and drop inside the Widgets section …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder the order of your website’s widgetized areas using drag and drop.
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 click for support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
If we look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features display on the site in exactly the same order as they are arranged in the active widget screen …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the order of items in the sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can improve your site’s user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar navigation section, and the support section (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From The WordPress Sidebar Section
Removing widgets from your sidebar area is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from your sidebar area …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove widgets)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from your sidebar navigation menu. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized further. 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 …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, click Delete to delete the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget settings …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no configurable options, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizing options)
Preview Widgets
Depending on 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 your customizations before committing anything live to your website or blog.
Widget management is a great feature of WordPress. You can work in preview mode inside the WordPress Theme Customizer screen (Appearance > Customize) and see how the widget content will appear before publishing any changes (to avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)
Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do many edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible on the site’s frontend.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved your changes, WordPress will automatically update the widget settings and display your new changes to your site visitors.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature 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 see the site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to configure various frequently-used sidebar 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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