There are many great benefits to using the WordPress web publishing application for building and growing a website or blog. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and reconfigure the layout of your site without coding skills and knowledge.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange various blocks of content in your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
This article explains how widgets work, what widgets do and how widgets can help improve the functionality of your website.
What Do WordPress Widgets Do? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For Business Website Users
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WordPress widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or list item to your site.
The WordPress software is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you have to know how to program PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds too technical. As will soon learn, widgets are made for non-techie users.
With widgets, you don’t need to know how to program PHP or manipulate PHP code in order to enhance your website.
(WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without having to mess with code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily add, edit and delete sections of code in certain areas of your site without having to touch any underlying code, and
- Rearrange 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 functions you can add to your site’s sidebar section (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WordPress widgets:
- website page list
- site categories
- blog post archive
- customized menus
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to your posts
- image banners
- client testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS content excerpts
- opt-in subscription form
- video galleries
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes easily add new features to WordPress and even drastically change the entire design of your website.
As you will soon discover, themes can affect how widgets display on your website and some plugins also come with accompanying widgets that can help further improve your website or blog’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, this is going to be in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be located in the site’s header section, the footer, sometimes even above or below your content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some themes only have one widgetized area)
Below is the widget panel of the above theme, where you can see that this particular theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only location where users can add widgets to their site using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown below contains a number of widget-ready areas …
(Many WP themes offer users a number of widget-enabled sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this WordPress theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added 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 themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
Where Can I See My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets area is found inside the WP admin area and can be accessed from the WordPress administration menu by choosing Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your browser window …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active on your site.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured 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 right out of the box in the default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new plugins are installed on your site, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all right inside your Widgets section just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Use drag and drop to easily reconfigure the order of your widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your site)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in their active widget area …
If we reorganize these widgets in the Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This immediately changes the layout of the 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 section (2) now sits above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
There are some more things worth keeping in mind when using WP widgets:
Widget Management – Customize Widgets Section
Depending on the theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage and customize your 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 many things in preview mode, like inserting, removing 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 your WP 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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you earlier, WordPress lets you easily rearrange how information displays in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily 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.
Reorganize sidebar elements using 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 most static websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, customize features on page elements like subscription forms, or just add things like a nested list of pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, an archives section, menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable images, customer testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS feed items, images, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizable 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 configuration options)
Many widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further configure your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customizing options!)
How To Use WordPress Widgets
As we have just 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 widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of 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, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you improve your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please see our related posts section.
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