There are so many benefits to using WordPress for managing and growing your website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and rearrange the layout of your site without having web coding skills.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, remove, and reconfigure various blocks of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
In this post you will learn what WordPress widgets are, what they do and how widgets can help you to add functionality to your web site.
What Do WordPress Widgets Do? An Overview Of Widgets For Beginners
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or item to your WordPress site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you need to learn how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As will soon learn, widgets are made for non-technical users.
Widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your website without having to edit code.
(WP widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without having to touch code)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and delete features in certain areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any underlying code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your WordPress 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 many cool things you can add to your site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WP widgets:
- pages on your website
- blog post categories
- archived published posts
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- text ads
- testimonials
- polls
- RSS content excerpts
- opt-in subscription form
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we provide additional content about plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new features to WordPress and change the design of your site.
As you will soon learn, WP themes affect where widgets work on your website and many plugins also add accompanying widgets that can further enhance your website’s usability.
Widgetized Themes
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections on your site where widgets can appear.
Usually, this is going to be in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be in the header section, in the footer area, sometimes even below the content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some themes provide only one widget enabled section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, where you can see that this theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes multiple widget areas …
(Many WP themes provide multiple widget-enabled sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme shown above, so you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 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 Do I Access My Widgets?
To use widgets, access the Widgets panel located inside your WordPress admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets section displays a list of 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 activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically 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 website. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
By default, 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new plugins are installed on your website, you may find that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all from your Widgets section using drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
With drag-and-drop you can easily reorder the layout of your site’s widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget bar …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the order of items in your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty cool stuff, huh?
Let’s go over some more things worth knowing about using WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the WP theme that you have installed, you can also 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 widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and moving around your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is done 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 to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from your own dashboard is a great 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 it (and avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can completely rearrange how content is displayed in areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily redesigned the sidebar area 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.
Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the web templates to reorganize the order of elements, customize features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add other features like nested page lists, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, a blog post archive section, customized menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying text ads, customer testimonials or survey results, RSS content excerpts, video thumbnails, social media sharing buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable 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 customizing options)
Most widgets offer a number of settings that allow you to further customize these. 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 data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets offer configurable options!)
Using WP Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related 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 various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your site, plus lots of cool 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this information has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP web site management platform please see our related posts section.
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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum
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