There are so many great benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform to manage and grow your website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site and reconfigure your site’s layout with no programming skills or knowledge required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and rearrange various blocks of content from your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on your theme) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
This article explains what WP widgets are, what widgets do and how widgets can add new functionality to your website.
How Do WordPress Widgets Work? A Basic Guide To Widgets For Business Website Users
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
WP widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a script or list item to your WP site.
The WordPress software 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 learn how to write code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds too technical. As will soon discover, WordPress widgets are made for non-technical users.
WordPress widgets help you control many features and functions on your website without the need to touch code.
(Widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to control aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, widgets allow you to:
- Easily insert, edit and remove content sections in certain areas of your site without touching any underlying code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your WordPress 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 functions you can add to your site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WordPress widgets:
- list of your web pages
- post categories
- blog post archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- most popular posts
- post comments
- clickable text ads
- quotations
- survey results
- RSS feed items
- shopping cart information
- video galleries
- twitter 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 these easily add loads of new features to WordPress and even alter the entire look and feel of your website.
As you will soon discover, WordPress themes affect how widgets display on your website and many plugins include accompanying widgets that can further improve your site’s capabilities.
Widgetized Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Normally, you will find widgets at work in your sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, these can also be located in the site’s header area, footer, even below or above your content.
It all depends on what theme you have installed.
For example, the theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar …
(Some WordPress themes provide only one widget section)
Here is the widget section of the above theme, where you can see that this specific theme only includes one widget 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 area.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown below includes a number of different widget-ready areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users multiple widget-ready areas)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, so 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 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets area is found inside the WP dashboard and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets section in your browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that can be used on your site.
On the right-hand side of the screen, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active.
Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your site. Inactive widgets retain their settings.
In a default WordPress installation, 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, Archives, Categories, etc. to site visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog, you may find that new widgets are also added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WordPress Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them from your Widgets section using drag & drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag and drop)
Using drag & drop lets you easily reconfigure the layout and order of your widgetized areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in exactly the same order as they were arranged in the active widget bar …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active 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 instantly reorganizes the layout of your 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 banner (2) is now located above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty cool stuff, huh?
Let’s go over some other useful things about widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending on the actual theme that you have installed, you can also manage and customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing any changes to your live website.
You can do many edits and adjustments in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing your active widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes 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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you previously, with WordPress you can completely reorder how content displays in widgetized areas of your website or blog, like sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearrange sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the site’s sidebar area by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help to improve visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most static websites, you would need to edit code in the website’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 content categories, a blog post archive section, customized menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest comments, a section displaying advertisements, testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS feed content, product catalog images, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizable options)
Many widgets provide various options that allow you to further customize things. This includes 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 …
(Many widgets give you customizable options!)
How To Use WP Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use a number of different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of useful tips for getting the most 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 posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have 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 please see other posts we have published on this site.
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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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