There are lots of great things about using the WordPress CMS platform to manage and grow your digital presence. 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 web coding skills required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange various types of content in your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
In this article you will learn what widgets are, what they do and how widgets can help add functionality to your web site.
What Is A WordPress Widget? An Introduction To Widgets For New Users
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
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 scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions to a website, you need to know how to program code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As will soon discover, WP widgets are perfect for non-techies.
With widgets, you don’t need to know how to program or manipulate PHP code in order to expand the functionality of your site.
(Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your site without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove sections of code in certain parts of your WordPress site without touching any code, and
- Rearrange how various elements display on widget-enabled 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 functions you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- website page list
- site categories
- archive
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- recent comments
- clickable images
- testimonials
- poll results
- RSS content excerpts
- shopping cart forms
- video thumbnails
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Twitter)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we write more extensively about WP plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes easily add new features to WordPress and change the look and feel of your site.
As you will soon discover, themes affect how widgets work on your site and some plugins add accompanying widgets that will fine-tune your site’s features.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Normally, functions controlled by widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be found in the site’s header area, the footer area, even below your content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WP themes provide only one widget section)
Here is the widget panel of the theme shown above, so you can see that this specific WP theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only place where you can add widgets to your site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of widgetized areas …
(Many themes provide a number of widget-enabled sections)
Here is the widget panel of the theme above, and you can see how many widget areas are included in the WordPress theme …
(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 three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Can I See My WordPress Widgets?
To access the Widgets area go to Appearance > Widgets …
This opens the Widgets screen in your browser window …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & 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 on your site.
In addition, the Widgets area 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 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets display in your Widgets area when new plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all in your Widgets section using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
Using drag and drop lets you easily reorder the order and 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 show the following:
- 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 display)
Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in their active widget area …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reordered in your sidebar …
This instantly changes the order of items in your 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 section (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Let’s go over some more things about using WordPress widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing any changes to your live website.
You can do several modifications and adjustments to 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’ve 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!)
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 changes (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you completely reorganize how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widgets in the site’s sidebar menu by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to 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 your site’s templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like a member login section, or just add things like a page index, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, a post archives section, custom menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest comments, a section displaying advertisements, customer testimonials or polls, content from RSS feeds, product catalog images, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no customizing options)
Many widgets provide various options that allow you to further customize these. This includes 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 …
(Many widgets offer customizable options!)
Using WordPress Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your WP web 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 detailed tutorials showing you how to use various types of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of great tips for getting 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 article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you expand your business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see our related posts section.
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"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
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