There are many great benefits to choosing the WordPress CMS platform to build and grow a web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your site and reconfigure the layout of your site without web coding skills and knowledge.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and manage various blocks of content in your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This blog post explains how WordPress widgets work, what makes them so useful and how widgets can enhance the functionality of your web site.
WordPress Widgets – How Do They Work? Understanding Widgets For Business Users
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A WordPress widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or list item to your WordPress site.
WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you have to know how to write code.
Now … don’t worry if it all sounds too technical. As will soon see, widgets are perfect for non-techies.
Widgets help you manage many features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding.
(Widgets help you control many features and functions on your site without requiring knowledge of coding)
Widgets were originally developed to provide an easy way of giving WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily insert, edit and delete functions in certain parts of your website without having to touch any code, and
- Reconfigure how various elements display 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 many great things you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar navigation area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WordPress widgets:
- list of pages
- categories
- blog post archive
- customized menus
- links to resources
- posts that you want to promote
- user comments
- advertisements
- quotations
- polls
- RSS feed items
- opt-in subscription form
- product images
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide an overview of WordPress plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can easily add new features to WordPress and even change the whole design of your site.
As you will soon discover, WP themes affect where widgets work on your web site and a number of plugins include accompanying widgets that can improve your website’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where you can add widgets to.
Usually, widgets can be found in the sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in your site’s header section, in the footer, and even below or above the content.
It all depends on the theme that you have installed on your site.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WP themes only provide one widget area)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, and you can see that this particular theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see, the only area where users can add widgets to their site using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown below includes multiple widget areas …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget-ready sections)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, you can add widgets 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 themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
How Can I See My WP Widgets?
To use widgets, access the Widgets area located inside the administration by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets area in your web browser …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets section displays a list of 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 using drag-and-drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. automatically become activated for use.
Your Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several 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 your default WordPress theme and display items like Recent Posts, Archives, Categories, etc. to your visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets are added to your Widgets area when new plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin section!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them inside your Widgets section using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
Using drag and drop technology lets you easily reconfigure the layout and order of your widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A contact support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in the same order as they have been arranged in the site’s active widget bar …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the layout of your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) now sits above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are very easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Here are some more things about using widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending upon the actual WP theme that you have installed, you’re also able to 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 to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you have done and click the “Save and Publish” button, your changes will then be instantly updated and reflected on your site to visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside your dashboard 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 changes (to avoid making mistakes), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you previously, with WordPress you can completely reorganize how information is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help improve your site’s visitor experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the layout in the sidebar section by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganizing sidebar elements using widgets can help to improve 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 the web templates to rearrange the order of elements, customize features on page elements like shopping cart forms, or just add things like a list of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, a blog post archive section, custom menus, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable images, quotations or survey questions & results, RSS content, video galleries, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configurable 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 customizable options)
Most widgets provide additional options that allow you to further configure these. 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 dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets give you customizable options!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your web site simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s corresponding widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use a number of different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus many cool tips on how to get the most benefit out of WordPress using 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 a new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, this article has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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"I have used the tutorials to teach all of my clients and it has probably never been so easy for everyone to learn WordPress ... Now I don't need to buy all these very expensive video courses that often don't deliver what they promise." - Stefan Wendt, Internet Marketing Success Group
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