There are loads of great things about using the WordPress CMS platform for building and growing a web site. One of these is that WordPress makes it very easy to add content, expand your site’s functionality and reconfigure the layout of your site with no coding skills and knowledge required.
WordPress allows you to quickly and easily insert, delete, and reconfigure various types of content from your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections too, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(WordPress widgets)
This post explains what widgets are, what makes them so useful and how widgets can help improve the functionality of your website.
Widgets – What Are They? An Introduction To Widgets For Business Website Owners
(Widgets help make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a small block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a form, or a script or list item to your website or blog.
WordPress 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 need to learn how to script web code.
Now … don’t worry if this all sounds like geek speak. As you are about to learn, WordPress widgets are perfect for non-technical users.
Widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your site without the need to edit code.
(WP widgets help you manage specific features and functions on your website without requiring coding skills)
Widgets were originally designed to provide a simple way of giving WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.
In plain English terms, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and delete features in certain parts 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 many additional components you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar menu (and headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:
- website page list
- categories
- archives
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- links to your recent posts
- comments
- text ads
- client testimonials
- polls & surveys
- RSS content excerpts
- newsletter subscription form
- videos
- Facebook feeds
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other blog posts, we provide detailed content about plugins and themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes add new functionality to WordPress and even change the whole look and feel of your site.
As you will learn in a moment, themes affect where widgets work on your site and some plugins also come with accompanying widgets that can fine-tune your website or blog’s usability.
Widgetized Areas
Most themes support widgets and provide widgetized sections in the theme’s layout where widgets can appear.
Usually, widgets can be found in your sidebar, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be in the site’s header, in the footer area, and even below your content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site.
For example, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below has only one widget area adding features to the theme’s sidebar navigation …
(Some themes have only one widgetized area)
Below is the widget section of the theme shown above, where you can see that the theme only contains one widget-enabled area …
As you can see, the only place where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar area.
In contrast, the WP theme shown in the screenshot below includes multiple widget-enabled areas …
(Many WordPress themes provide multiple widgetized sections)
Here is an enlarged image of the widget section of the theme shown above, and you can see how many widget areas this particular theme includes …
(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 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 area)
How Can I See My Widgets?
To use widgets, access the Widgets section located inside your admin by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This brings you to the Widgets area in your browser window …
(Widgets Panel)
The Widgets area displays all the widgets that are currently available for use on your site.
The right-hand section of the window displays your “active” widgets …
(Activate or deactivate widgets using drag-and-drop)
Available widgets can be activated or deactivated by dragging & dropping items to different areas of the panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. instantly become available for use.
In addition, the Widgets screen includes an Inactive Widgets section that lets you remove any widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your website. 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 right out of the box in the default WordPress theme and display items like Search, Recent Comments, Meta, etc. to site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with several pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, you may find that new widgets appear in your Widgets section when new plugins are installed on your website or blog …
(Installing plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets section!)
Widgets Features: Drag-And-Drop
Widgets are great because you can easily add, activate, deactivate, reorder and delete them all in your Widgets area using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets using drag & drop)
Use drag and drop to easily reorder the order and layout of your site’s widgetized sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this example site, the widgets have already been configured to display the following:
- A newsletter subscription form,
- A contact support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WP plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site display)
If you take a peek inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar area in the same order as they were arranged in their active widget bar …
Let’s now rearrange the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area using drag-and-drop …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widget features have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the layout of your 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 image banner (2) is now found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(Widgets are really easy to use!)
Pretty simple stuff, huh?
Here are a few other useful things about widgets that are also worth knowing about:
Widget Management – Widget Previews
Depending upon the actual 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 see before committing any changes to your live website.
You can do several edits, modifications and adjustments to your widgets in preview mode, like inserting, removing and moving around your active 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 from within your own 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 (to avoid making errors), or manage widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area shown earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we have shown you previously, WordPress lets you quickly reorganize how information displays in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-&-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar elements using widgets to improve user experience)
In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have easily rearranged the 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.
Rearrange sidebar elements using widgets to improve 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 reorganize the order of elements, make unique customizations to features on page elements like a customers login section, or just add useful features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archived blog posts section, custom menus, links to recommended resources, links to your recent posts, the latest excerpts of comments added to your posts, a section displaying advertising, quotations or polls & surveys, RSS content excerpts, image 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 an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets give you little to no customizing options)
Most widgets provide various settings that allow you to further customize them. This can include things like making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or information, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Many widgets offer customization!)
Using Widgets
As you 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 related widget into your Active widgets area.
For useful tips and tricks to using widgets, see these great tutorials showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to improve the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of 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 new at WordPress, you may also find the following topic-related posts useful:
Hopefully, this post has given you 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 the benefits of using the WordPress software please see other posts we have published on this site.
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