There are lots of great benefits to using the WordPress web publishing tool to build and grow a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, enhance your website and rearrange your site’s layout with no web programming skills required.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, remove, and reconfigure various types of content on your site’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on what theme you are using) using widgets.
(WP widgets)
In this article you will learn how widgets work, why widgets are great for non-technical users and how widgets can help you add functionality to your website or blog.
What Are WordPress Widgets? An Introduction To Widgets For Business Website Owners
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
Widgets are self-contained blocks of code that perform a specific function, such as adding an enhancement, or a script or item to your website or blog.
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 have to learn how to program PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds too geeky. As you are about to discover, WordPress widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
Widgets help you control technical features and functions on your site without having to edit code.
(WordPress widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their WordPress theme’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets allow you to:
- Easily add, edit and delete sections of code to certain areas of your WordPress site without touching any web code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your theme on ”widgetized” areas of your site (e.g. the sidebar, header, footer and other areas) using drag-and-drop technology.
Here are just some of the functionality you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- list of pages
- site categories
- archive
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- your most popular posts
- user comments
- advertising banners
- testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS content
- shopping cart forms
- product catalog images
- social media buttons
- display widgets from other sites (e.g. Facebook friends)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts and tutorials, we write more extensively about WP plugins and WordPress themes; what they are, what they do, how these add loads of new features to WordPress and even change the entire design of your website.
As you will learn in just a moment, themes affect how widgets display on your site and many plugins also add accompanying widgets that can fine-tune your site’s capabilities.
Widget-Ready Themes
Most themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections on your site where widgets can show up in.
Usually, widgets can be found in the theme’s sidebar, but depending on the theme, these can also be found in your site’s header section, the footer, and even below the content.
It all depends on what theme that you have installed.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area adding functionality to the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some WordPress themes only have one widget section)
Below is the widget panel of the above theme, so you can see that this particular theme only includes one widget area …
As you can see, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains various widget-enabled areas …
(Many WordPress themes provide multiple widget sections)
Below is the widget screen of the theme above, so you can see how many widget areas this theme includes …
(Multiple widgets 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 themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
The Widgets screen is found within the WordPress dashboard and can be easily accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This opens the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets panel displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
On the right-hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become active and available on your site.
In addition, the Widgets area includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to actively display on your website. Inactive widgets retain their pre-configured settings.
By default, 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 the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to your visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets appear in your Widgets section as new WordPress plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
Widgets Features: Drag And Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all right inside your Widgets area just by using drag & drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
Use drag & drop to easily rearrange the layout and order of your website’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 the following:
- A subscription form,
- A click for support button, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features appear on your site)
Looking inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar section in the same order as their corresponding widgets have been arranged in the site’s active widget bar …
Let’s now rearrange the order the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in the sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now the first item on the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) has been moved to the location above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are very easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Let me show you some other useful things about widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Customizer Section
Depending upon the actual WP theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing your changes to the live website.
You can do a number of modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and moving around 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 to your site visitors.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from your own WordPress 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 changes (to avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area as shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained previously, WordPress lets you completely reorganize how information displays in widgetized areas of your website sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Rearranging sidebar layout using widgets can help to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have rearranged the layout in the site’s sidebar by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by dragging and dropping the widgets into different positions inside the sidebar widget area.
Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s visitor experience.
Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customized instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?
Absolutely!
With most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your website’s templates to reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like user registration areas, or just add useful features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, a blog post archive section, menus to display selected pages, links to recommended resources, a list of your most read posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying advertising banners, testimonials or polls, RSS content excerpts, image galleries, Facebook feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customization, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customizable options)
Many widgets provide various settings that allow you to further customize your site features. This includes making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets give you customizable options!)
How To Use Widgets
As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be added to your website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed step-by-step tutorials showing you how to use a number of different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your site, plus many cool tips on how to get the most benefit 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 learning how to use WordPress, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of problems that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you grow your business online. To learn more about using the WordPress CMS platform please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now
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