There are lots of great things about using the WordPress CMS platform to build and manage a website or blog. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your website and rearrange your site’s layout with no programming skills required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and rearrange various types of content from your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this blog post you will learn what widgets are, why they are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to supercharge your site.
What Are WordPress Widgets? An Overview Of Widgets For Business Users
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
WP widgets are small modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a script or menu item to your WP site.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you need to know how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
WP widgets eliminate the need to know how to program or manipulate PHP code in order to customize your site.
(Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without having to edit code)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and delete blocks of code to certain parts of your WordPress site without having to touch any web code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your theme 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 cool things you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- index of pages
- post categories
- archived posts
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- recent comments from users
- clickable images
- quotations
- survey questions & results
- RSS content
- newsletter subscription form
- videos
- social media buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide detailed content about WordPress plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add loads of new features to WordPress and change the entire look and feel of your website.
As you will soon learn, themes can affect where widgets display on your site and a number of plugins also add accompanying widgets that can fine-tune your website or blog’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections on your site where you can add widgets to.
Normally, features powered by widgets can be found in the sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be found in the header area, in the footer, even below or above the content area.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area adding items to the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WP themes only have one widgetized area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme shown above, so you can see that this specific WordPress theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your website using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of different widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widget areas)
Below is the widget section of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas this particular theme includes …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added 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)
Where Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets section can be accessed inside the administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This opens the Widgets screen in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that are available.
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 made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured settings.
In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of 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 in your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to your visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, when new plugins are installed on your site, you may find that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them inside your Widgets section just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Use drag-and-drop to easily reconfigure the order and layout of your site’s widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in their active widget bar …
Let’s now change the order the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar …
This instantly changes the layout of your site’s 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 banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Here are some other useful things worth keeping in mind with WP widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending on the WP theme that you have installed, you’re also able to manage your 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 things to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, 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 have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site.
(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 before publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you earlier, WordPress lets you quickly reorganize how content is displayed in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the site’s sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help to improve your site’s 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 the web templates to reorganize the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like user registration areas, or just add things like a nested list of pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, a post archives section, custom menus, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying clickable images, user testimonials or survey results, RSS feed content, video thumbnails, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizable options)
Most widgets offer various options that allow you to further configure things. 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 dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customizable options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of great tips for getting the most benefit 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 a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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