As we have discussed in this article, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress to manage and grow your web presence is that you can easily add content, enhance your site’s functionality, or change the layout of your website without web coding skills required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and reorganize content on your site’s sidebar (or header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- nested page lists
- blog categories
- post archives
- custom page menus
- links to external sites
- links to recent posts
- comments
- text ads
- testimonials
- polls
- RSS content excerpts
- registration box
- video
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other 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 widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, see this article:
In this tutorial series we explain how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.
How To Use Widgets In WordPress
The Basics
Before we show you how to configure widgets, let’s make sure that you understand some of the basic concepts of using widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme, widgets can also be found below or above the content area …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-ready areas)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget administration area called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Panel
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see 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 available for use on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets Using Drag-And-Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets just by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
You can also easily reorder the order of your website’s widget-ready areas with drag and drop ease.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display the following to visitors:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ section from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of the items around …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar area …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in your sidebar.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar navigation menu, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s delete the Search widget from your sidebar …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, either expand the widget settings 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 …
(How to remove a WP widget)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from the sidebar navigation area. You can always reactivate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets can be customized. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your 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 the widget …
(Toggling expands/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 customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizable options)
Customize Widgets Section
Depending on which WP theme you have installed, you’re also able to customize widgets without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before committing anything to your website or blog.
Widget management 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 any changes (and avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes 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 screen in the back-end.
You can do a number of edits to your widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and it’s all done in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.
Because the theme you use affect how elements display on your site, we recommend installing 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 go through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, it’s time to learn how to start configuring various frequently-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials.
Click on this link to view the rest of this tutorial:
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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