As we’ve explained in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing the WordPress CMS platform is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality, or rearrange the layout of your site without requiring any web programming skills or knowledge.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, delete, and manage content from your website’s sidebar (or header and footer sections, 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 like:
- list of pages
- blog categories
- archives
- customized menus
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- post comments
- advertising
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS content excerpts
- opt-in subscription form
- video galleries
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from other 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 WP widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s capabilities, go here:
In this step-by-step tutorial you are going to learn how to use and configure various commonly-used widgets in WordPress.
How To Use Widgets
The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, it helps to first review some of the basic concepts about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in sections in the theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can sometimes also be added in the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-ready areas)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that are available.
The right-hand section of the window displays the “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active.
Your Widgets screen also 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.
Reorganize Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, or activate, deactivate, reorder and delete widgets using drag & drop in the Widgets area …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout using drag and drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
If we look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets are arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now rearrange the order of these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping some of these items around …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar navigation section …
As you can see, this instantly changes the layout of your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve user experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar area, and the support banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar section is very easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from the sidebar menu …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either open up the widget and click the Delete link …
(Delete your widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and drop it into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove your WP widgets)
Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from your sidebar. You can always restore widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This includes hiding information from users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget expands the item and displays the settings for that widget …
(Toggle to expand/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, 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 may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)
Theme Customizer
Depending on which WP theme you are using, 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.
The ability to manage widgets from your own 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 before publishing changes (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize feature)
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 section in the backend.
You can do several edits to the widgets in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you like the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will be instantly updated and made visible on the site’s frontend.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving your changes, your new updates will automatically show on your site.
Because the WordPress theme you use can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on the 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 go 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, let’s start configuring a number of commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part one of this tutorial series on using WordPress widgets.
To view Part 2, 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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