There are loads of great things about using the WordPress web publishing software for building and managing a website or blog. 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 having code editing skills.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and rearrange various types of content in your website’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(Widgets)
This post explains what widgets are, what makes them so useful and how widgets can enhance the functionality of your website.
What Are WordPress Widgets? An Overview Of Widgets For Business Users
(WP widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a self-contained module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a text box or menu item to your site.
WordPress is written using a web language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). Normally, in order to add features and functions to a website, you have to learn how to write PHP code.
Now … don’t worry if the above sounds like geek speak. As will soon learn, WordPress widgets are made for non-techies.
With widgets, users don’t need to know how to write code or manipulate PHP code in order to expand the functionality of their sites.
(WordPress widgets help you control specific features and functions on your website without the need to touch code!)
Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to allow WordPress users to manage aspects of their site’s layout and functionality.
In simple terms, a widget allows you to:
- Easily add, edit and remove blocks of code to certain areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any underlying code, and
- Rearrange the functional layout of your WP 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 many additional components you can add to your site’s sidebar area (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- pages on your site
- site categories
- archives
- menus displaying only selected pages
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- post comments
- advertising
- quotations
- poll results
- RSS content
- registration box
- video galleries
- twitter feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other articles, we provide an overview of WP plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how these easily add new functionality to WordPress and even drastically change the design of your website.
As you will soon discover, themes affect how widgets work on your site and some plugins also add accompanying widgets that will fine tune your site’s features.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-enabled areas on your site where widgets can appear.
Usually, you will find functions managed by widgets in the theme’s sidebar, but depending upon the theme, these can also be found in your site’s header section, the footer area, and even above or below your content.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site.
For example, the theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area adding items to the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes provide only one widget section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see that this theme only contains one widget area …
As you can see from the above, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WordPress theme shown below includes multiple widget-ready areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widgetized sections)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget section of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas the theme includes …
(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 WP themes let you add widgets to your site’s footer section)
How Can I See My WP Widgets?
The Widgets area can be accessed inside the WP admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings up the Widgets screen in your browser window …
(Widgets Section)
The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets you 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 using drag & drop.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become active.
The Widgets area also includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want to use on your site. Inactive widgets retain their 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 in the default WordPress theme right out of the box and display items like Search, Archives, Meta, etc. to your visitors …
(In a default WordPress installation, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, as new plugins are installed on your site, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …
(Installing new plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them all right inside your Widgets section using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag and drop)
Using drag and drop lets you easily reorder the 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 show the following:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized plugin …
(Widgets control how certain features on your site display)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar section in the same order as they were arranged in the site’s active widget section …
If we reorganize the above widgets in the Active Widget Area using drag & drop …
(Drag and drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in the sidebar …
This instantly changes the order of items in your site’s 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 graphic button (2) now sits above the newsletter subscription form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty cool, huh?
There are some other things worth knowing about using WordPress widgets:
Widget Management – Previewing Widgets
Depending on the actual WP theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage and customize your widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to the live website.
You can do many edits in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around your current widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and see all changes in real time. If you like what you’ve 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 WordPress 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 errors), or change widgets on the fly using the Widget editor screen as discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily reorganize how information displays in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse button, using drag-and-drop technology …
(Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily reorganized the layout in the site’s sidebar section by switching around 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 static websites, you would need to edit code in the web templates to rearrange the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like opt-in forms, or just add useful features like an index of your site pages, or a dropdown menu of your site categories, a post archives section, menus to display selected pages, links to recommended resources, a list of your most popular posts, the latest comments, a section displaying clickable ads, user testimonials or survey results, RSS content excerpts, images, 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 an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no configuration options)
Many widgets provide various settings that allow you to further customize things. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets offer customization!)
Using WP Widgets
As we have seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WP website or blog 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 improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of great 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 learning how to use WordPress, 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 expand your business online. To learn more about using WordPress for a business website or blog please see other posts we have published on this site.
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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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