As we discuss in this article, one of the many benefits of using WordPress is that you can easily add content, enhance your site, and reconfigure the layout of your website with no web coding skills or knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily add, delete, and manage various types of content from your blog’s sidebar (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) 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) like:
- list of your web pages
- categories
- archives
- custom page menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- recent comments
- advertising banners
- customer testimonials
- polls
- content from RSS feeds
- newsletter subscription form
- images
- social media buttons
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
(WordPress widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier)
To learn more about what widgets are, how widgets work and how using widgets can help you expand your site’s functionality, go here:
In this tutorial we will show you how to use and configure various commonly-used WordPress widgets.
Using Widgets
Basic Concepts
Before we start learning how to configure widgets, it helps to first review some of the basics about how to use widgets:
Most WordPress Themes Support Widget-Ready Layouts
Many WordPress themes support widgets and provide areas in your theme’s layout where you can use widgets, such as the sidebar area, header area, and the footer area. Depending on your theme, widgets can sometimes also get added inside the content area …
(Many WP themes provide multiple widget-ready areas)
These widget-ready layouts correspond to a feature inside the Widget administration screen called “Widget Areas” …
(Widget Areas)
The Widgets Panel
The Widgets screen 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 sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like the sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become active and available for use.
In addition, the Widgets area 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.
Reorganize WordPress Widgets With Drag And Drop
You can easily add new functionality to your site, and activate, deactivate, reorder and remove things using widgets by dragging and dropping items from your Widgets area …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
You can also easily reorder your theme’s layout with drag and drop ease.
For example, in the image below, the widgets have already been configured to display things like:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support button, and
- ’Click to call’ feature from a widgetized WP plugin (i.e. a plugin with an accompanying widget) …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
If we look inside this site’s Widget area, you will see that these features correspond to the order of widgets inside the active widget area …
Let’s now reorganize these widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in the widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
This immediately reorganizes the layout of your site’s sidebar.
Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience.
Note in the screenshot below that the ‘click to call’ function (3) is now first the sidebar navigation menu, and the support image banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Rearrange sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience)
Deleting Widgets From Your WordPress Sidebar Menu
Deleting widgets from the sidebar is really easy.
For example, let’s remove the Search widget from your sidebar navigation menu …
(Search widget)
To remove a widget from an active Widget area, you can either open up the widget settings and click the Delete link …
(How to delete WordPress widgets)
Or just drag the widget out of the Active Widgets area and into the Inactive Widgets section …
(How to remove WordPress widgets)
Repeat this process for any other widgets you want removed from the sidebar navigation menu. You can always reinstate widgets by moving them back into the active widgets area.
Widget Settings
Many widgets provide a number of options that allow you to further configure things. This can include things like hiding information from users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc.
Clicking on the little triangle in the corner of a widget toggles between expanding and collapsing the item and displays the widget’s 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)
Some widgets may require or offer no customization, or they may only allow you to add something like an optional title …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no configurable options)
Previewing Your Widgets
Depending on the theme you use, you’re also able to preview any changes live without making actual changes to your site. This way, you can be sure that you like your customizations before committing anything to your website or blog.
The ability to manage widgets from your own 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 before publishing any changes you’ve made (to avoid making errors), or configure widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen.
(preview widget changes in the Customize feature)
If you need to make changes to your site while viewing the front-end, just click on the Customize link …
(Toolbar Customize Link)
This will bring you to the Customizer feature in the backend.
You can do several edits to widgets in preview mode (like adding, removing and moving widgets around), and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve done, click the “Save and Publish” button and the changes will instantly become visible on your site.
(Widget management – configure widgets on the fly!)
After saving your changes, the new updates will automatically be added to your site.
Since WordPress Themes can display elements differently on your site, we recommend that you install your theme first before configuring widgets on the sidebar.
Also, remember to use the WordPress Customizer to preview all changes. This saves you from having to keep two browsers open while you work through this tutorial (one to work in and one to check how the changes are coming along).
Now that you know the basics of using widgets, the next step is to learn how to begin configuring a number of commonly-used WordPress sidebar widgets.
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This is the end of section one of this series of tutorials about how to use WordPress widgets.
To view the rest of this tutorial series, click this link:
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