There are so many great benefits to using WordPress to manage and grow your digital presence. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange the layout of your site without web programming skills.
WordPress gives you the ability to quickly and easily insert, delete, and reconfigure various blocks of content from your website’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, what widgets do and how widgets can help enhance the functionality of your site.
What Are Widgets? An Overview Of WordPress Widgets For Beginners
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
Widgets are small modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, or a text box or menu item to your website.
The WordPress application is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order 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 geeky. As will soon learn, widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
With WordPress widgets, users don’t need to know how to write code or manipulate PHP code to customize their website.
(WordPress widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your website without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally developed to provide a simple way of allowing WordPress users to control aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget allows you to:
- Easily insert, edit and delete functions to areas of your site without having to touch any code, and
- Rearrange 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 things you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar navigation area (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on your theme) using WordPress widgets:
- list of pages
- categories
- archives
- customized menus
- links to resources
- your most popular posts
- user comments
- image banners
- testimonials
- surveys
- RSS feed content
- opt-in form
- product catalog images
- social media buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we write more extensively about WordPress plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add new features to WordPress and even drastically alter the whole look and feel of your website or blog.
As you will learn in just a moment, themes can affect how widgets display on your site and some plugins add accompanying widgets that can help further extend your website or blog’s usability.
Widgetized Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections on your site where you can have widgets in.
Usually, widget-powered features can be found in your theme’s sidebar menu, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be found in the header, the footer, sometimes even below or above your content.
It all depends on what theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WordPress theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area displaying items in the theme’s sidebar …
(Some themes have only a single widget enabled section)
Here is the widget screen of the above theme, so you can see that the theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their site using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below includes a number of different widgetized areas …
(Many themes offer users a number of widget sections)
Below is the widget panel of the theme shown above, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this particular theme …
(Multiple WordPress widget 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 3 different Footer areas (Footer Area One, Footer Area Two, Footer Area Three) …
(Some themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer area)
Where Can I See My Widgets?
To access the Widgets section log into your dashboard and go to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets panel in your web browser …
(Widgets Area)
The Widgets area displays a list of all the widgets that you currently have available.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag & drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging-and-dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. immediately become active and available.
Your Widgets panel also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site. Inactive widgets do not lose their settings.
By default, 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 in the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Recent Posts, Recent Comments, Categories, etc. to visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets appear in your Widgets area as new WP plugins are installed on your website …
(Installing new WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets admin area!)
WP Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all right inside your Widgets area using drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag and drop)
Using drag-and-drop lets you easily reorder the layout and order of your site’s widgetized 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 contact support button, and
- Click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If we were to peek inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site in exactly the same order as they have been arranged in the site’s active widget area …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area by dragging & dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag & drop widgets in your widget area to rearrange their order)
The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …
As you can see, this instantly reorganizes the order of items in the 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) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Let’s go over some more things worth keeping in mind when using WP widgets:
Widget Management – Customize Widgets Section
Depending upon the 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 have done before committing any changes to the live website.
You can do several things to widgets in preview mode, like adding, deleting and reorganizing the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and everything is 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 on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets from within your 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 before publishing any changes (to avoid making errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly and easily rearrange how content is displayed in areas of your site sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements with widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the sidebar section by switching 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.
Rearranging sidebar elements with widgets can help 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 rearrange the layout, customize features on page elements like shopping cart forms, or just add other features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, an archives section, menus, links to external sites, links to your recent posts, the latest user comments, a section displaying text ads, customer testimonials or survey results, RSS feed content, videos, social media share buttons, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no customizing options, other than to add an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets offer little to no customization)
Many widgets offer a number of settings that allow you to further customize your site features. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying sizes of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets offer customization!)
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 WordPress website or blog simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related widget into your Active widgets area.
For some useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these detailed tutorials showing you how to use various widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus lots of useful 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 a new WordPress user, you may also find the following related posts useful:
Hopefully, now you have a better understanding of issues that can affect your web site and how WordPress can help you get better results online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business website please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
***
"These tutorials have so much information and are easy to understand. If you use WordPress or plan to in the future these will help you with everything you need to know." - Valisa (Mesa, Arizona)
***