There are so many great benefits to using WordPress to manage and grow a web site. One of these is that you can easily add content, enhance your website and rearrange the layout of your website without code editing skills.
WordPress lets you quickly and easily add, delete, and manage various blocks of content on your blog’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections, depending on what theme is installed on your site) using widgets.
(Widgets)
In this post you will learn how widgets work, why widgets are ideal for non-technical users and how widgets can help add new functionality to your website or blog.
What Are Widgets? Understanding Widgets For New Users
(Widgets make managing and using WordPress easy!)
A widget is a small module of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a functionality, or a script or item to your WordPress site.
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 have to know how to program code.
Now … don’t worry if this sounds too geeky. As will soon learn, WordPress widgets are made for non-techies.
Widgets help you control many features and functions on your website without requiring knowledge of coding.
(WordPress widgets help you manage technical features and functions on your site 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.
Simply put, widgets let you do things like:
- Easily add, edit and remove blocks of code to certain areas of your WordPress site without having to touch any 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 features you can add to your WordPress site’s sidebar menu (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using WordPress widgets:
- nested list of pages
- blog categories
- archive
- custom menus
- links to external sites
- posts that you want to promote
- comments
- clickable images
- testimonials
- surveys & polls
- RSS content excerpts
- shopping cart information
- product catalog images
- social media share buttons
- add widgets from external sites (e.g. Facebook)
- administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)
In other posts, we provide an overview of WordPress plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add loads of new functionality to WordPress and even alter the look and feel of your website.
As you will soon discover, WP themes affect where widgets display on your website and many plugins add accompanying widgets that can further fine tune your website or blog’s functionality.
Widget-Ready Areas
Most WordPress themes support widgets and provide widget-ready sections on your site where widgets can show up in.
Usually, this is going to be in your sidebar menu, but depending on the theme, these can also be in the header section, the footer, and even above or below your content area.
It all depends on the theme you have installed on your site or blog.
For example, the WP theme in the screenshot below provides users with only one widget area for the theme’s sidebar area …
(Some WP themes only provide a single widgetized section)
Below is an enlarged image of the widget screen of the above theme, and you can see that this specific theme only contains one widgetized area …
As you can see, the only area where users can add widgets to their website using the above theme is in the site’s sidebar section.
In contrast, the theme shown in the screenshot below contains a number of widget areas …
(Many themes offer users multiple widget-enabled areas)
Below is the widget screen of the above theme, and you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WordPress theme …
(Multiple widgets areas)
As you can see, with the above theme, widgets can be added to the sidebar area of two 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)
How Do I Access My Widgets?
The Widgets panel is located inside the WordPress dashboard and can easily be accessed by going to Appearance > Widgets …
This loads the Widgets area in your browser window …
(Widgets Screen)
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 & dropping items to different sections of the widgets panel.
Widgets dragged from the Available Widgets section to widget areas like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately available for use.
In addition, your Widgets area 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 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 Recent Posts, Archives, Meta, etc. to your site visitors …
(By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets)
Sometimes, new widgets get added to your Widgets section as new WordPress plugins are installed on your site …
(Installing WP plugins can sometimes add new widgets to your Widgets area!)
Widgets Features: Drag & Drop
WP widgets are great because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, reorder and remove them all right inside your Widgets area using simple drag and drop …
(Rearrange widgets on your WordPress site using drag-and-drop)
Using drag-and-drop lets you easily reorder the layout of your site’s widget-enabled sections.
For example, take a look at the image below. In this site, the widgets have already been configured to show the following:
- An opt-in form,
- A click for support banner, and
- A couple of click to call sales buttons from a widgetized WordPress plugin …
(Widgets control the order certain features on your site appear)
Looking inside this site’s Widget area, you would see that these features appear on the site’s sidebar area in exactly the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in their active widget bar …
If we change the above widgets in the Active Widget Area by dragging and dropping elements in the widget area …
(Drag-and-drop to rearrange widgets in your widget area)
The widgets have now been reorganized in your sidebar …
As you can see, this immediately reorganizes the layout of your site’s sidebar. Note in the screenshot below that the click to call function (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the contact us banner (2) can now be found above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …
(WordPress widgets are really easy to use!)
Cool, huh?
Here are a few other useful things about WP widgets that are also worth keeping in mind about:
Widget Management – Theme Customizer
Depending on the theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to customize widgets without making actual changes to your site, so you can be sure that you like what you see before committing these changes to your live website.
You can do many modifications and adjustments to widgets in preview mode, like adding, removing and reorganizing your active 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 on your site.
(Widget management – work in preview mode or configure widgets on the fly!)
The ability to manage widgets inside your own 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 prior to publishing changes (to avoid making mistakes), or manage your widgets on the fly using the Widget editor area discussed earlier.
Widget Configuration
As we’ve explained in an earlier example, WordPress lets you quickly and easily reorganize how information is displayed in widgetized areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with only a few clicks of your mouse, using drag-and-drop …
(Reorganize sidebar layout using widgets to improve your site’s user experience)
In the above screenshot, for example, you can see that we have easily change the layout in the sidebar menu by switching the search and testimonial sections. As you now know, this was easily done by simply 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 most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in your website’s templates to rearrange the layout, make unique customizations to features on page elements like shopping cart forms, or just add features like your website’s page list, or a dropdown menu of your categories, an archived blog posts section, menus that display only selected pages, links to external sites, a list of your most read posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying advertising banners, customer testimonials or survey results, RSS feed content, product catalog images, Twitter feeds, and more.
While some widgets are “fixed” in the sense that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add something like an optional title to the widget as shown in the example below …
(Some widgets provide users with little to no customizing options)
Many widgets offer a number of options 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 data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …
(Most widgets give you customizing options!)
How To Use WordPress 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 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 boost the effectiveness of your website or blog, plus lots of cool tips for getting 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, this post has given you a better understanding of issues that can affect your website and how WordPress can help you build a better online. To learn more about the benefits of using WordPress for a business web site please click on links to visit other posts we have published on this site.
***
"Your training is the best in the world! It is simple, yet detailed, direct, understandable, memorable, and complete." Andrea Adams, FinancialJourney.org
***