As we have explained in this post, one of the many great benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality, or redesign the layout of your site without web coding skills required.

WordPress allows you to easily insert, remove, and rearrange various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar section (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.

Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:

• index of pages
• post categories
• archives
• menus
• links to external sites
• most read posts
• comments
• clickable text ads
• quotations
• polls
• RSS feed content
• registration box
• image galleries
• twitter feeds
• add widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
• administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)

(WordPress 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 your site’s capabilities, go here:

• Using WordPress: Understanding WordPress Widgets

In this step-by-step tutorial series we teach you how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.

Using Widgets In WordPress

The Basics

Before we get into configuring and using widgets, it helps to first go over some of the basics about using widgets:

Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas

Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets, such as the sidebar section, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can also show up in the content area …

(Many WP themes offer users a number of widgetized areas)

These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside your Widget panel called “Widget Areas” …

(Widget Areas)

Your Widgets Screen

The Widgets section displays all the widgets that are available.

The right-hand section of the screen displays the “active” widgets …

(Widgets can be activated or deactivated with drag and drop ease)

Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different sections of the panel.

Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately active and can be used to perform their function on your site.

In addition, your Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.

Reorganize Widgets With Drag & Drop

You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets using simple drag & drop inside your Widgets area …

(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)

You can also easily reconfigure your theme’s layout using drag-and-drop.

For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:

1. An opt-in form,
2. A contact support banner, and
3. A ‘click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin that adds an accompanying widget to your site) …

(Widgets control the order certain features display on your WordPress site)

Looking inside the Widget area, you would see that the front-end features display on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the back-end widget area …

Let’s now change the order the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …

(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)

The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar navigation area …

This instantly changes the layout of the site’s sidebar.

Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to 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 area, and the ‘contact us’ section (2) is now found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …

(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s user experience)

Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar Area

Deleting widgets from your WordPress sidebar is very easy.

For example, let’s remove the Search widget from the sidebar navigation menu …

(Search widget)

To delete a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget and click the Delete link …

(Delete your WP widgets)

Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and drop it into the Inactive Widgets area …

(How to remove widgets)

Repeat this process for any other widgets you want to remove from your sidebar. You can always reinstate a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.

Widget Settings

Most 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 widget’s settings …

(Toggling expands/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 something like an optional title …

(Some widgets give you little to no customizing options)

Previewing Widgets

Depending on the WordPress theme you have installed on your site, 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 live 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 before publishing it (and avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.

(preview widget changes live in the Customize section)

If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …

(Customize link in the toolbar)

This brings you to the Customizer area in the back-end.

You can do plenty of edits, modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like inserting, deleting and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with the results, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will instantly become visible on the blog’s frontend.

(Widget management – work in preview mode)

After saving the changes, all changes made to widgets will be automatically updated.

Since the theme you use determines how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar navigation menu.

Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This saves 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 WordPress widgets.

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This is the end of part 1 of this series of tutorials.

To view the rest of this tutorial series, click here:

• Adding And Configuring WordPress Widgets In The Website – Part 2

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