As we have explained in this post, there are loads of great benefits in using the WordPress CMS platform to build, manage and grow your website. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your website’s functionality, or rearrange the site’s layout with no web coding skills and knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and control content on your website’s sidebar (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you use) using widgets.
Once you know how to use widgets, you can easily add things to your site like:
- list of pages
- blog categories
- archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- text ads
- client testimonials
- survey questions & results
- RSS feed items
- registration box
- video thumbnails
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. Pinterest)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy)
To learn more about what widgets are, how they work and why widgets can make managing your site easier, see this article:
In this tutorial series you are going to learn how to use and configure various frequently-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
Widgets – The Basics
Before configuring and using widgets, let’s cover some of the basics of how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide built-in widget-ready sections in your theme’s layout where widgets can be used, such as the sidebar navigation menu, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also be used in the content area …
(Many WordPress themes offer users multiple widget-enabled sections)
These widgetized sections correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration panel called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Screen
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the screen displays the “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag and drop)
Available widgets can be made Active or Inactive by dragging & dropping items to different sections of the widgets screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and can be used for their purpose.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want to use on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add, activate, deactivate, rearrange and delete widgets by dragging and dropping items in your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout with drag & drop ease.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things on your site like:
- A newsletter opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A ‘click to call’ function from a widgetized plugin (i.e. a WordPress plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If you take a look 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 area …
If we rearrange these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag & drop to rearrange widgets in the widget area)
The widget features have now been reordered in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the order of items in your site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar section, and the ‘contact us’ banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Rearranging sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve your site’s visitor experience)
Removing Widgets From Your Sidebar
Deleting widgets from your sidebar menu is very easy.
For example, let’s show you how to delete the Search widget from your sidebar menu …
(Search widget)
To delete an active widget, you can either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(Delete a widget)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets area …
(Remove a WP widget)
Repeat this process for any widgets you want to remove from the sidebar section. You can always restore a widget by dragging it back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Most widgets can be further customized. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Click on the little triangle in the corner of a widget to toggle between expanding and collapsing the item …
(Toggling expands/collapse widget settings)
When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, delete your widget from the “Active Widgets” section, close the widget, or click on the triangle to collapse the widget …
(Widget settings)
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 customization)
Preview Your Widgets
Depending upon the theme you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize and manage widgets 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 website or blog.
The ability to manage widgets from your own WP dashboard 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 change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(Edit widgets in the Customize feature)
When viewing your site on the front-end just calick the Customize link in the toolbar …
(Customize your site quickly)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do many edits and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode (like inserting, removing and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you are happy with what you have done, click the “Save and Publish” button and your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving changes, your new settings will automatically show on your site.
Since the theme you choose tend to affect how elements display on your site, we recommend that you install the theme first before configuring widgets.
Also, remember to use the Customizer feature to preview your changes. This will save you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial.
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to configure a number of commonly-used sidebar widgets in WordPress.
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This is the end of part 1 of this tutorial.
Click on this link to continue:
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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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