As we’ve discussed in this post, one of the many benefits of using the WordPress web publishing software to build and manage your website or blog is that you can easily add content, enhance your website, or reorganize the layout of your website without requiring web coding skills.
WordPress lets you easily insert, delete, and reconfigure various types of content on your blog’s sidebar navigation menu (and 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 like:
- page lists
- post categories
- post archives
- custom page menus
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- excerpts of recent comments added to your posts
- image banners
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- RSS feed items
- newsletter registration form
- image galleries
- social media sharing buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this tutorial series we teach you how to use and configure various frequently-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use Widgets
The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first cover some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar menu, header area, and footer. Depending on your theme, widgets can also be used inside the content area …
(Many WordPress themes provide multiple widgetized sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets you can use on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …
(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available for use.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress 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 layout of your theme’s widgetized sections with drag and drop ease.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized WordPress plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If you take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget area …
If we rearrange these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the support section (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve user experience)
Deleting Widgets From The Sidebar Navigation Section
Removing widgets from your WordPress sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from your sidebar section …
(WordPress Search widget)
To remove an active widget, either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(How to delete your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(Remove WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want removed from your sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further configure 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 dimensions 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, remove your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets provide users with little to 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 Previews
Depending on the WP theme you use, you can also manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like the customized edits before committing anything live to your website or blog.
The ability to manage widgets inside the dashboard is a valuable 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 prior to publishing it (and avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area.
(preview widget changes in the Customize section)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This brings you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do a number of edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and everything is done in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become available on your site.
(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 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 complete this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s start configuring a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial series.
Click here to access Part Two:
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