Tag: WordPress 101

There are many great things about using the WordPress web publishing tool to build and manage a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure your site’s layout without requiring any coding skills.

WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and rearrange various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.

(Widgets)

In this post you will learn how widgets work, why they are ideal for non-technical users and how widgets can help to expand the functionality of your website.

Widgets – How Do They Work? A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For New Users

(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)

WP widgets are self-contained blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, or a text box or menu item to your WordPress site.

The WordPress software is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order 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 too technical. As will soon learn, WP widgets are perfect for non-techies.

WordPress widgets don’t require you to know how to write code or manipulate PHP code to expand the functionality of your site.

(WordPress widgets help you control specific features and functions on your site without having to touch code)

Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.

Simply put, a widget allows you to:

• Easily add, edit and remove blocks of code in certain areas of your WordPress site without touching any 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 things you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:

• nested list of your web pages
• categories
• archives
• custom page menus
• links to resources
• links to your recent posts
• comments
• image banners
• user testimonials
• polls
• content from RSS feeds
• newsletter subscription form
• videos
• social media share buttons
• add widgets from other sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
• administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)

In other articles, we write more extensively about plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these can easily add new features to WordPress and even alter the look and feel of your site.

As you will learn in a moment, WordPress themes can affect how widgets display on your web site and a number of plugins also install accompanying widgets that will fine tune your website or blog’s capabilities.

Widget-Ready Themes

Most WP themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections on your site where widgets can display.

Normally, widget-driven functions can be found in the theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be located in your site’s header section, in the footer area, sometimes even below or above the content area.

It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site or blog.

For example, the theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area adding functionality to the theme’s sidebar area …

(Some themes have only a single widget section)

Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see that this WordPress theme only includes one widget-enabled area …

As you can see, the only place 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 in the screenshot below includes various widget areas …

(Many themes offer users multiple widgetized sections)

Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas are included in the WP theme …

(Multiple widgets areas)

As you can see, in the above theme, widgets can be added 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 section)

How Can I See My Widgets?

To use widgets, access the Widgets section located inside your WP administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …

This opens the Widgets area in your web browser …

(Widgets Screen)

The Widgets panel displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.

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 made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.

Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become available for use on your site.

In addition, your 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.

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 in your default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to visitors …

(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)

Sometimes, when new plugins are installed on your website, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …

(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)

WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop

Widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them within your Widgets section using drag and drop …

(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag & drop)

With drag-and-drop you can easily reorder the layout and order of your widget-enabled sections.

For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:

1. An opt-in form,
2. A contact support button, and
3. Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …

(Widgets control the order certain features appear on your WordPress site)

Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in their active widget area …

If we change the order 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 reordered in the sidebar …

This immediately reorganizes the order of items in your 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 banner (2) is found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …

(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)

Pretty simple, huh?

There are some more useful things worth keeping in mind with widgets:

Widget Management – Customize Widgets Section

Depending upon the WP theme that you have installed, you’re also able to manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing your changes to your live website.

You can do several things to widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and moving around your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done 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 any changes you’ve made (and avoid making errors), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as shown previously.

Widget Configuration

As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can quickly rearrange how content is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …

(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)

In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily reorganized the sidebar section 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.

Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to 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 subscriber forms, or just add useful features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, an archived blog post entries section, menus that display only selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying clickable ads, quotations or surveys & polls, RSS feed items, videos, Facebook feeds, and more.

While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …

(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizable options)

Most widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further customize things. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …

(Most widgets give you customization!)

How To Use Widgets

As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.

For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use different types of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus many 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:

• WordPress Features Explained – What Is A Plugin
• WordPress For Beginners – An Introduction To WordPress Themes

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 using WordPress for a business website or blog please click on links to visit our related posts section.

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