As we’ve discussed in this article, one of the many benefits of choosing WordPress is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, or reconfigure the site’s layout without the need to have coding skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to easily insert, delete, and control various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar (and header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) like:
- website page list
- site categories
- archives
- custom menus
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- clickable images
- quotations
- surveys & polls
- RSS content excerpts
- registration box
- product images
- twitter feeds
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
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 step-by-step tutorial series you will learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets In WordPress
What You Need To Know First
Before we start configuring and using widgets, let’s go over some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widgetized sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar, header area, and footer. Depending on the theme installed on your site, widgets can also get added in the content area …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-ready areas)
These widgetized areas correspond to a feature inside your Widget management screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
Widgets Screen
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets you can use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately active on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize Widgets Using Drag And Drop
You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove things using widgets using simple drag and drop inside the Widgets section …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout by using drag-and-drop.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ buttons from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
If we take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget area …
Let’s now rearrange the order of the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging & dropping some things around …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar section …
As you can see, this immediately changes the order of items in your sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now first the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to remove the Search widget from the sidebar navigation area …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete your WP widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(How to remove your widget)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want removed from the sidebar. You can always reinstate widgets by dragging them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be customized further. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes 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, click Delete to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
Some widgets offer little to no customizable options, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Preview Your Widgets
Depending upon which WP theme you are using, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before committing anything to your website.
The ability to manage widgets from your 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 (to avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)
If you need to make changes to the site while viewing the frontend, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer area in the back-end.
You can do a number of modifications and adjustments in preview mode (like adding, removing and reorganizing your widgets), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on the blog’s frontend.
(Widget management – work in preview mode)
Once you have saved the changes, your new settings will automatically be added to your site.
Because WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend installing the theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar menu.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview all changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to see your site the way your visitors will see it).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, let’s configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.
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This is the end of section one of this tutorial series about how to use Widgets.
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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