There are so many great things about using the WordPress CMS platform to manage and grow a website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout with no programming skills or knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, remove, and rearrange various types of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
In this post you will learn how widgets work, why they make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help to add functionality to your website.
Widgets – What Are They? A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For Business Users
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A WordPress widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a script or list item to your website.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to learn how to program web code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds like geek speak. As you are about to discover, WP widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
WordPress widgets don’t require users to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code to enhance their websites.
(WP widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without requiring knowledge of coding)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget allows you to:
- Easily add, edit and delete functions to certain parts of your website without touching any code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display on ”widgetized” areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the features you can add to your site’s sidebar menu (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- list of pages
- post categories
- archives
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- post comments
- clickable ads
- quotations
- polls & surveys
- RSS feed content
- subscription form
- video galleries
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how these add new features to WordPress and even alter the look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will see in a moment, themes can affect where widgets work on your website and a number of plugins also come with accompanying widgets that can further enhance your website or blog’s functionality.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Usually, this is going to be in your sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in the header, in the footer area, even above or below your content section.
It all depends on what theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WordPress themes have only one widgetized area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, so you can see that this particular WP theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes multiple widgetized areas …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-ready areas)
Below is the widget panel of the above theme, where you can see how many widget areas the theme includes …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)
Where Can I See My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets area is located inside your WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets panel in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and can be used on your site.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets (e.g. widgets for displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …) and active widgets.
These widgets are available right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets appear in your Widgets section whenever new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them within your Widgets area using drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
Drag & drop lets you easily reorder the layout of your widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your site)
If you could peek inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the site’s active widget area …
Let’s now change these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic button (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple, huh?
Let’s go over some other useful things about using widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending on the actual theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do many edits and adjustments in preview mode, like adding, removing and moving around the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
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 your widget content will appear prior to publishing it (and avoid making mistakes), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained previously, with WordPress you can completely reorganize how information displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widgets in the site’s sidebar area by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many static websites, you would need to edit code in your web templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add things like page lists, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, an archived posts section, menus that display only selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable text ads, quotations or polls & surveys, RSS content, video galleries, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no configuration options)
Many widgets offer various options that allow you to further configure things. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets give you configurable options!)
Using Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use a number of different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your web site, plus many useful tips on how to get the most out of WordPress using widgets:
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 1
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 2
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 3
- How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets – Part 4
Related Posts
If you are learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress CMS platform please see our related posts section.
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