There are lots of great benefits to using the WordPress CMS platform to build and grow a web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your website and rearrange the layout of your site with no web coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, remove, and reconfigure various types of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this article you will learn how widgets work, what they do and how widgets can help you to grow your site.
About WordPress Widgets: A Basic Guide To WordPress Widgets For Business Owners
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A WordPress widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or list item to your WP site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you need to know how to script PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds too technical. As will soon discover, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
WordPress widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills.
(WP widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without having to touch code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete functionality in parts of your site without having to touch any code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your WP theme 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 additional components you can add to your WP site’s sidebar menu (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using widgets:
- list of pages
- blog categories
- archives
- custom menus
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- advertising
- client testimonials
- surveys & polls
- RSS feed content
- newsletter registration form
- product catalog images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we write more extensively about WP plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes easily add new functionality to WordPress and even drastically alter the whole design of your website or blog.
As you will see in a moment, WordPress themes affect where widgets work on your site and a number of plugins also come with accompanying widgets that will enhance your website or blog’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WP themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas in the theme’s layout where you can have widgets in.
Typically, features powered by widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in your site’s header area, in the footer, sometimes even above or below your content.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes have only one widgetized area)
Below is the widget screen of the theme shown above, and you can see that this WordPress theme only includes one widget-enabled area …
As you can see from the above, the only location where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of different widget-enabled areas …
(Many themes provide a number of widget sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, where you can see how many widget areas are included in the WordPress theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget 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 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Do I Access My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets section is found inside the WP dashboard and can be accessed from the WP admin menu by selecting Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets screen in your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets screen displays all the widgets that you currently have available.
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 made Active or Inactive using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and can be used.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display 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 Recent Posts, Archives, Meta, etc. to site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new WP plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
WordPress widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them right inside your Widgets area just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Using drag and drop technology lets you easily reconfigure 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 show:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
If we take a peek inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the site’s active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, 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) now sits above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple, huh?
There are some other things about using WP widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – WordPress Theme Customizer
Depending upon the theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize and manage your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing these changes to your live website.
You can do a number of modifications and adjustments in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done 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!)
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 prior to publishing changes (and avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained earlier, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorganize how content displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the sidebar area 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.
Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the site’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like a newsletter registration form, or just add things like a list of pages on your website, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archives section, menus that display only selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest excerpts of comments added to your posts, a section displaying advertising, customer testimonials or poll questions & results, RSS feed items, product images, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration 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 customizing options)
Many widgets offer various options that allow you to further configure these. This includes making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customizable options!)
How To Use Widgets
As we have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WordPress website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your 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 a WordPress newbie, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP platform please see other posts we have published on this site.
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