There are so many benefits to using WordPress for managing and growing a business online. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and rearrange the layout of your site without coding skills.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
In this article you will learn what WP widgets are, what widgets do and how widgets can be used to add functionality to your site.
WP Widget: An Overview Of WordPress Widgets For Business Website Users
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!)
A WordPress widget is a self-contained block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or menu item to your site.
WordPress is written using a scripting 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 all sounds too geeky. As will soon discover, WordPress widgets are made for non-technical users.
Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without having to edit code.
(WordPress widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way of allowing WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget allows you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove content sections to certain parts of your WordPress site without touching any code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your theme on widget-enabled areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the great things you can add to your site’s sidebar area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WP widgets:
- website page list
- site categories
- archive
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- your most read posts
- comments
- advertisements
- testimonials
- surveys
- RSS content
- customers login section
- product images
- social media sharing buttons
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we write more extensively about plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add loads of new features to WordPress and even drastically change the design of your website or blog.
As you will soon discover, themes affect where widgets display on your website and some plugins also come with accompanying widgets that can enhance your website’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections on your site where widgets can appear.
Normally, widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be found in the header area, the footer, even below or above your content.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area adding items to the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes have only one widget section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme above, and you can see that this particular theme only includes one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only place where you can add widgets to your website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes a number of widget-ready areas …
(Many themes provide multiple widgetized sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this WordPress theme …
(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 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
How Do I Access My WP Widgets?
The Widgets panel is located inside the WordPress dashboard by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets section displays all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become available for use.
In addition, your Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their 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 Search, Archives, Categories, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new WP plugins are installed on your website, you will see that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all from your Widgets area just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag & drop)
Use drag and drop technology to easily rearrange the order of your site’s widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features display on your WordPress site)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar section in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the site’s active widget bar …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the layout of your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us image button (2) now sits above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty cool, huh?
There are some more things worth knowing about using WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – WP Theme Customizer
Depending on the WP theme that you have installed, you’re also able to customize and manage 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 many edits in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is 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 on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside your own WordPress 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 changes (to avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have explained previously, with WordPress you can easily and quickly reorganize 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 …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widget elements in the sidebar by switching 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.
Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve user experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With many static websites, you would need to edit code in your site’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add features like a list of your web pages, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archives section, customized menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying advertising banners, user testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS content excerpts, image galleries, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configuration options)
Many widgets offer various settings that allow you to further customize 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 offer customizable options!)
Using WordPress Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your web site 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 step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use different types of widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus many useful 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 topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"If you're new to WordPress, this can stand on its own as a training course and will stay with you as you progress from beginner to advanced and even guru status." - Bruce (Columbus, Ohio)
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