There are lots of benefits to using WordPress to build and grow a website. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site and reconfigure your site’s layout without having programming skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily add, remove, and manage various types of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this post you will learn how widgets work, why widgets are ideal applications for non-technical users and how widgets can help add new functionality to your site.
What’s A WordPress Widget? An Introduction To WordPress Widgets For Business Users
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a self-contained block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a text box or item to your website or blog.
The WordPress software 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 have to know how to write PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds too geeky. As will soon learn, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without having to touch code.
(WP widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without requiring coding skills)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, a widget lets you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and delete functions to certain areas 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 functionality you can add to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WP widgets:
- website page list
- post categories
- blog post archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- links to your recent posts
- recent comments from users
- clickable images
- user testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- opt-in form
- images
- social media buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Amazon)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide detailed content about plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new features to WordPress and even drastically alter the design of your website or blog.
As you will see in just a moment, WordPress themes can affect where widgets display on your site and a number of plugins also install accompanying widgets that will help further improve your website’s capabilities.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can show.
Normally, functions managed by widgets can be found in your theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, these can also be found in the header, footer, and even above or below the content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes have only a single widgetized area)
Below is the widget screen of the theme above, where you can see that the theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only area where you can add widgets to your site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown below includes a number of different widgetized areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users a number of widget-ready sections)
Below is the widget screen of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of two different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and three different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Do I Access My WordPress Widgets?
The Widgets section is found inside your WP administration area and can be accessed from the dashboard menu by selecting Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Screen)
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately activated for use.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
By default, 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 the default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new WP plugins are installed on your website, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them in your Widgets section just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)
Drag & drop lets you easily reorder the 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 the following:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your site)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar menu in exactly the same order as they were arranged in their active widget bar …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag-and-drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets 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 function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us graphic banner (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Easy, huh?
Let’s go over some more useful things worth knowing about widgets:
Widget Management – Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the theme that you have installed, you’re also able to customize your 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 edits, modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing the currently added 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!)
Widget management 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 (and avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained previously, WordPress lets you easily reorder how information is displayed in widgetized areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the sidebar area 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.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help 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 many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like shopping cart information sections, or just add other features like a list of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your blog categories, an archive section, menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most read posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying image banners, testimonials or polls, RSS feed items, image galleries, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing 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 customization)
Many widgets offer various options that allow you to further customize your site features. This can include things like 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 provide users with customization!)
How To Use Widgets
As you 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 widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use different types of widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus many great tips on how to get 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 new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this post has given you a better understanding of problems that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP platform please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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