There are lots of great things about using the WordPress web publishing application for managing and growing your digital presence. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your site with no code editing skills and knowledge required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and rearrange various blocks of content on your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
In this article you will learn what widgets are, why they are ideal for non-technical users and how widgets can add new functionality to your website or blog.
What Do Widgets Do? A Basic Guide To Widgets For Business Users
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WP widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a text box or menu item to your WordPress site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you need to know how to program PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, WP widgets are made for non-techie website owners.
WordPress widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your website without the need to edit code.
(WP widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way to allow 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 remove content sections to areas of your site without having to touch 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 many features you can add to your WP site’s sidebar section (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- site pages
- post categories
- post archives
- customized menus
- links to resources
- most popular posts
- user comments
- clickable ad banners
- quotations
- polls & surveys
- RSS content
- subscriber form
- images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new functionality to WordPress and alter the look and feel of your site.
As you will soon learn, WP themes can affect where widgets display on your site and some plugins also add accompanying widgets that will help further extend your site’s performance.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Usually, widget-powered features can be found in your theme’s sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be in the site’s header section, the footer, and even below or above the content section.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WordPress themes have only one widget-ready area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, where you can see that this specific WP theme only includes one widgetized area …
As you can see, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes various widget-enabled areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users a number of widget-ready sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets panel is found within your WordPress dashboard and can be accessed from the WP dashboard menu by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive 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. 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 to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
In a default WordPress installation, 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 in your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Archives, 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 or blog, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all within your Widgets section using simple drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
Drag & drop lets you easily rearrange the layout and order of your website’s widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site appear)
Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in the same order as they were arranged in the active widget bar …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly changes the layout of your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now first the sidebar menu, and the contact us image button (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty cool, huh?
Here are a few more things about using WP widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the theme that you have installed, you can also customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to your live website.
You can do many things to widgets in preview mode, like adding, removing and reorganizing your current 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.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
Widget management 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 (to avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily rearrange how content displays in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have redesigned the sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets 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 your site’s templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like shopping cart information sections, or just add other features like a list of pages on your website, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, a blog post archive section, menus to display selected pages, links to external sites, links to your recent posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying clickable text ads, customer testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS content excerpts, product images, social media buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizing options)
Many widgets offer various options that allow you to further configure these. 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 provide users with customizable options!)
Using WordPress Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus many cool tips on how to get the most benefit out of WordPress with 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 posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
***