There are loads of great benefits to using the WordPress web publishing application to build, manage and grow a website. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and rearrange the layout of your site without requiring any code editing skills.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily insert, delete, and control various blocks of content from your site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
This blog post explains what widgets are, why widgets make life easier for non-technical users and how widgets can help you to improve the functionality of your site.
What Are Widgets? A Basic Guide To Widgets For New Users
(WP widgets help make managing and using WordPress easier!)
Widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a text box or item to your website.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, to add features and functions that will enhance the functionality of a website, you need to know how to script code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds too geeky. As will soon discover, widgets are perfect for non-techies.
Widgets help you control specific features and functions on your site without having to touch code.
(WP widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without the need to edit code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to control aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
Simply put, a widget allows you to:
- Easily insert, edit and delete features in areas of your website without having to touch 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 great things you can add to your site’s sidebar menu (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WP widgets:
- list of pages
- post categories
- archives
- menus that display only selected pages
- links to resources
- links to recent posts
- user comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- survey results
- RSS feed content
- member login section
- image galleries
- Facebook feeds
- display widgets from external sites (e.g. affiliate programs)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we provide more detailed explanations of WordPress plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how these can add new features to WordPress and even drastically alter the design of your website.
As you will see in a moment, themes can affect where widgets work on your site and some plugins include accompanying widgets that can enhance your website’s performance.
Widgetized Themes
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widgetized areas on your site where widgets can show.
Typically, features managed by widgets can be found in the sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be found in your site’s header section, the footer, even above or below your content section.
It all depends on what theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some themes provide only one widgetized section)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the theme above, and you can see that this particular WP theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see from the above, the only place where users can add widgets to their site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of widget areas …
(Many WordPress themes offer users multiple widget-ready sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas are included in the WordPress theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget areas)
As you can see, in the above theme, you can add widgets to the sidebar area of 2 different page templates (Main Sidebar and Showcase Sidebar) and 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some WordPress themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)
Where Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets panel is found inside the WP admin area and can easily be accessed from the WP admin menu by choosing Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the screen displays 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 screen.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and available on your site.
In addition, the Widgets panel includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets do not lose their pre-configured 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 visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, whenever new plugins are installed on your website or blog, you may find that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets area …
(Installing new WordPress plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them within your Widgets area just by using drag and drop …
(Rearrange your site’s widgets using drag-and-drop)
With drag & drop you can easily reorder the order of your site’s widget-enabled areas.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features display on your WordPress site)
Inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in their active widget bar …
If we change the above widgets in the Main Sidebar Widget Area using drag and drop …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widgets have now been reordered in your 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 first the sidebar menu, and the contact us section (2) is found above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty simple, huh?
There are some more things about using widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Customizer Section
Depending on the WordPress theme that you have installed on your site, you can also manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you have done before committing your changes to your live website.
You can do several edits and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like adding, removing and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done 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 to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside 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 any changes you’ve made (and avoid making mistakes), or change your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you earlier, with WordPress you can quickly and easily reorder how content displays in areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Reorganizing sidebar elements with widgets can help improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily change the widget elements in the sidebar by switching around the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s 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 website’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, customize features on page elements like subscriber forms, or just add things like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archive section, menus that display only selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most popular posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable text ads, customer testimonials or surveys & polls, RSS feed content, video galleries, social media 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 give you little to no customization)
Many widgets provide various options that allow you to further customize your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets provide users with customizing options!)
How To Use Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your web 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 tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your web site, plus lots of useful tips on how to get 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 for a business web site please click on links to visit our related posts section.
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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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