How To Use And Configure WordPress Widgets

Learn how to use and configure WordPress widgets on your sidebar. This tutorial explains the basic concepts of using Widgets to extend the functionality of your website and provides an overview of the Widgets area.

Configuring Widgets On Your WordPress Sidebar Navigation AreaAs we discuss in this article, one of the many benefits of using the WordPress web publishing tool to build, manage and grow a web site is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your site, and rearrange the site’s layout without web programming skills or knowledge required.

WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, remove, and reconfigure content on your blog’s sidebar navigation area (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you have installed) using widgets.

Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) like:

  • page lists
  • blog categories
  • archives
  • menus that display only selected pages
  • links to external sites
  • most read posts
  • recent comments
  • advertisements
  • testimonials
  • survey results
  • RSS feed content
  • opt-in subscription form
  • video
  • social media buttons
  • add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
  • administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)

Widgets make managing and using WordPress easier!

(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)

To learn more about what WordPress widgets are, how they work and how using widgets can help you expand the functionality of your website, go here:

In this tutorial you will learn how to use and configure a number of commonly-used WordPress widgets.

Using WordPress Widgets

The Basics

Before we get into configuring and using widgets, let’s first review some of the basics of how to use widgets:

Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Areas

Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in the theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar navigation section, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can also show up inside the content area …

(Many WordPress themes provide a number of widgetized areas)

(Many WP themes offer users multiple widget-ready areas)

These widgetized layouts correspond to a feature inside the Widget management area called “Widget Areas” …

Widget Areas

(Widget Areas)

The Widgets Panel

The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.

On the right-hand side of the window, you can see the “active” widgets …

Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop

(Widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag-and-drop)

Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the widgets panel.

Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become activated for use.

Your Widgets screen also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.

Rearrange Widgets Using Drag & Drop

You can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete things using widgets using simple drag & drop in the Widgets area …

Rearrange your site's widgets using drag and drop

(Rearrange widgets using drag-and-drop)

You can also easily reconfigure the layout of your website’s widget-ready sections with drag-and-drop ease.

For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:

  1. A newsletter opt-in form,
  2. A contact support banner, and
  3. ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …

Widgets control the order certain features on your site display

(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)

If you were to peek inside the Widget area, you would see that the front end features display on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the backend widget section …

Rearrange your site's widgets using drag & drop

If we change the order these widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping some of these items around …

Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order

(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)

The widget features have now been reorganized in the sidebar navigation menu …

Rearrange your site's widgets using drag & drop

As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in the site’s sidebar.

Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience.

Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ feature (3) is now the first item on the sidebar, and the ‘contact us’ graphic button (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …

Rearranging sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site's visitor experience

(Reorganizing sidebar layout with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)

Removing Widgets From Your WordPress Blog Sidebar Menu

Removing widgets from the sidebar is really easy.

For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar area …

WordPress Search widget

(Search widget)

To delete a widget from an active Widget area, either expand the widget settings and click the Delete link …

Deleting your WordPress widgets

(Delete your WP widgets)

Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets section and into the Inactive Widgets area …

How to remove your WP widgets

(Removing widgets)

Repeat this process for all widgets you want to remove from the sidebar. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.

Widget Settings

Most widgets can be customized further. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc.

Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to display the settings for the widget …

Toggling expands/collapse widget settings

(Toggles expand/collapse widget settings)

When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …

Widget settings

(Widget settings)

Info

Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add an optional title …

Some widgets provide users with little to no configurable options

(Some widgets offer little to no customizing options)

Preview Widgets

Depending on which WP theme you choose, you can also preview any changes live without actually making changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you are happy with your customizations before committing anything to your site.

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 it (to avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.

Edit widgets live in the Customize feature

(Edit widgets live in the Customize section)

Wherever you are on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …

Customize your site quickly

(Customize link in the toolbar)

This brings you to the Customizer screen in the backend.

You can do several edits and adjustments to the widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and moving widgets around), and everything is done in real time. If you like what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on the blog’s frontend.

Widget management - configure widgets on the fly!

(Widget management – work in preview mode)

After saving your changes, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display the latest configuration to your site visitors.

Useful Tip

Because the WordPress theme you use can affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar navigation menu.

Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you go through this tutorial.

Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to configure a number of frequently-used WordPress widgets.

How To Add And Configure WordPress Widgets In Your Website

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This is the end of section 1 of this tutorial series about using Widgets.

To continue, click this link:

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"This is an awesome training series. I have a pretty good understanding of WordPress already, but this is helping me to move somewhere from intermediate to advanced user!" - Kim Lednum

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