There are many benefits to choosing the WordPress web publishing software for building and managing a website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your website’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout with no code editing skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, remove, and control various types of content in your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
This article explains what widgets are, what makes widgets so useful and how widgets can be used to enhance the functionality of your web site.
What Are Widgets? A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For Newbies
(WordPress widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WP widget is a self-contained block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a text box or menu item to your WP site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions to a website, you need to learn how to program PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As you are about to learn, WordPress widgets are perfect for non-techies.
WP widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without having to touch code.
(Widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without having to mess with code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete functions in parts of your website without touching 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 functions you can add to your site’s sidebar section (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- site pages
- content categories
- blog post archive
- custom page menus
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- opt-in form
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide more detailed explanations of plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even change the look and feel of your website.
As you will soon learn, themes affect where widgets display on your website and some plugins include accompanying widgets that will improve your website’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can show.
Typically, you will find widgets at work in your sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be located in the header section, in the footer area, and even below your content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes have only a single widget section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, where you can see that this particular WP theme only includes one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where you can add widgets to your website using the theme above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of widget areas …
(Many WP themes provide multiple widgetized sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, where you can see how many widget areas this particular theme includes …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, in 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 themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
To access the Widgets section log into your administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets section in your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets you can use on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-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. become immediately activated for use on your site.
In addition, the Widgets screen 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 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new WP plugins are installed on your site, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all inside your Widgets section using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Using drag & drop technology lets you easily rearrange the order of your website’s widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features appear on your site)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in the same order as they have been arranged in the active widget section …
Let’s now rearrange the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
This immediately changes the order of items in 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) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
Here are a few other useful things about using WordPress widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Theme Customizer
Depending on the actual WP 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 these changes to the live website.
You can do several things to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and reorganizing 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 on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from your WP 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 prior to publishing any changes (to avoid making errors), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganize sidebar layout with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by 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 the site’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like newsletter subscription forms, or just add things like a list of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your content categories, an archived blog post entries section, menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest comments, a section displaying advertising banners, testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS content, product catalog 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 customization)
Most widgets provide various options that allow you to further configure your site features. This can include things like 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 …
(Many widgets give you customization!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WP website 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 tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of great 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 new WordPress user, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WordPress software please see other posts we have published on this site.
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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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