There are so many great things about choosing WordPress to build, manage and grow your website or blog. 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 without having code editing skills or knowledge.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and rearrange various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this article you will learn how WP widgets work, why widgets make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help add new functionality to your website or blog.
What Is A Widget? An Overview Of Widgets For New Users
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
Widgets are small blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, or a text box or menu item to your WP site.
The WordPress software 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 write code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As you are about to see, WordPress widgets are perfect for non-techies.
WP widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills.
(Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete blocks of code to certain areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any underlying 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 great things you can add to your WP site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WordPress widgets:
- site pages
- categories
- archive
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to resources
- most read posts
- comments
- clickable ad banners
- user testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed content
- registration box
- video galleries
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we write more extensively about plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add new functionality to WordPress and even drastically change the look and feel of your site.
As you will soon learn, themes can affect where widgets work on your site and many plugins also add accompanying widgets that will fine tune your website’s features.
Widgetized Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can be added to.
Usually, widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be in the header area, in the footer, even above or below your content.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WordPress themes only provide one widget enabled area)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see that this WordPress theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only location where users can add widgets to their website using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below contains a number of widgetized areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widget-ready areas)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(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 three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)
Where Can I See My WP Widgets?
The Widgets section is located inside the WP administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This opens the Widgets screen in your browser window …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
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 sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become activated for use.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. 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 right out of the box in your default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to your 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 section …
(Installing WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them inside your Widgets section just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
Using drag-and-drop lets you easily reconfigure the layout of your website’s widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to phone sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your WordPress site)
If you take a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget section …
If we change the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area by dragging and 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 …
This instantly changes the layout of the 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 subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Let me show you some more things worth keeping in mind with WP widgets:
Widget Management – WP Theme Customizer
Depending on the actual WordPress theme that you have installed, you’re also able to manage widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do several modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and moving around your active 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 to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from within your own dashboard 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 (to avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained previously, with WordPress you can easily reorder how content displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have rearranged 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.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can improve your site’s 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 web templates to rearrange the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like shopping cart information sections, or just add features like a page index, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archive section, custom menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertising banners, user testimonials or polls, content from RSS feeds, product images, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no customization)
Most widgets provide additional options that allow you to further configure your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets offer configuration options!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your site 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 various widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your site, plus many useful 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 topic-related 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 using WordPress for a business website please see our related posts section.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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