There are many benefits to using the WordPress CMS platform to build, manage and grow a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and rearrange your site’s layout with no programming skills required.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, remove, and manage various blocks of content on your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This article explains how WordPress widgets work, why widgets make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help you supercharge your site.
What Do WordPress Widgets Do? Understanding WordPress Widgets For Business Website Users
(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 list item to your website.
WordPress 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 write code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds too technical. As you are about to learn, widgets are perfect for non-techies.
WordPress widgets help you control technical features and functions on your website without having to edit code.
(Widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your website without having to touch code)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove features in areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure the functional layout of your WordPress 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 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 WordPress widgets:
- website page list
- blog categories
- blog post archive
- menus
- links to external sites
- most popular posts
- excerpts of recent comments added to posts
- clickable images
- quotations
- survey results
- RSS content excerpts
- opt-in subscription form
- video
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we provide an overview of WP plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new functionality to WordPress and alter the entire design of your site.
As you will soon learn, themes affect how widgets display on your web site and many plugins add accompanying widgets that will enhance your site’s performance.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can display.
Normally, functions powered by widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, widgets can also be in the header, the footer area, even below or above your content section.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area adding features to the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some themes only have one widget-ready section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme above, where you can see that the WordPress 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 shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown below includes multiple widget areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-enabled areas)
Below is the widget screen of the above theme, so you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific 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 WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)
How Can I See My WordPress Widgets?
To access the Widgets section log into your WordPress administration and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets area in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets area 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. instantly become activated for use on your site.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. 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 right out of the box in the default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to your site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets display in your Widgets area as new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete them all within your Widgets section just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
Drag & drop technology lets you easily reconfigure the order and layout of your site’s widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A subscription form,
- A contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the site’s active widget section …
Let’s now reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar 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 reordered in the sidebar …
This instantly reorganizes the order of items in the 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 graphic button (2) is found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty good stuff, huh?
Here are a few more things worth keeping in mind with widgets:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending upon the actual 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 several edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, deleting and reorganizing 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’ve 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 mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed previously.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you earlier, with WordPress you can easily reorder how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar layout with widgets to improve visitor experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have change the widget elements in the sidebar section by switching 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.
Rearrange sidebar layout with 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 many traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your website’s templates to reorganize the layout, customize features on page elements like an opt-in subscription form, or just add things like a list of your web pages, or a dropdown menu of your post categories, an archived posts section, customized menus, links to recommended resources, a list of your most read posts, the latest comments, a section displaying text ads, testimonials or poll questions & results, content from RSS feeds, product images, Twitter 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 provide users with little to no configurable options)
Many widgets provide additional options that allow you to further configure your site features. 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 data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets provide users with configurable options!)
Using WP 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 related widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great tutorials showing you how to use a number of different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of great tips on how to get the most benefit out of WordPress with 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 topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using the WP CMS software please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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