A Basic Guide To WordPress Widget Tutorial

WordPress Widget Tutorial

WordPress widgets make it easy to customise the content on the sidebar of your website. Learn how WordPress widgets work, why widgets can make life easier for non-technical users, and how widgets can help you to add new functionality to your web site.

There are loads of great things about using the WordPress web publishing tool to build and manage your digital presence. One of these is that you can easily add content, expand your site’s functionality and rearrange your site’s layout with no coding skills and knowledge required.

WordPress also lets you quickly and easily add, remove, and manage various types of content in your website’s sidebar menu (and header and footer sections too, depending on your theme) using a unique feature called a Widget.

In this WordPress Widget Tutorial you will learn what widgets are, what makes widgets so useful, and how widgets can help you to expand the functionality of your web site.

Widgets – What Are They? A Basic Guide To Widgets For Newbies

A WP widget is a small block of code that performs a specific function, such as adding a feature, or a script or list item to your site.

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 program PHP code.

Now don’t worry if the above sounds too “geeky” to you. As you are about to discover, widgets are perfect for “non-techies”.

Widgets eliminate the need to know how to program code or manipulate PHP code in order to enhance the functionality of your site.

Widgets were originally designed to provide an easy way to give WordPress users to manage aspects of their website’s layout and functionality.

In plain English terms, a widget lets you do things like:

Easily add, edit and remove sections of code in parts of your site without touching any code, and
Rearrange the functional layout of your 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 great functions you can add to your WP site’s sidebar section (plus headers and footers and other areas, depending on the theme you have installed) using widgets:

list of pages
site categories
blog post archive
menus displaying only selected pages
links to resources
posts that you want to promote
comments
clickable text ads
quotations
polls
content from RSS feeds
newsletter subscription form
video
social media buttons
display widgets from external sites (e.g. StumbleUpon)
administrative forms (e.g. login, register, etc.)

In other blog posts, we have explained plugins and WP themes; what they are, what they do, how plugins and themes can add new features to WordPress and even alter the design of your website or blog.

As you will see shortly, WP themes can affect how widgets display on your website and many plugins also add accompanying widgets that can extend your site’s performance.

Widget Themes

Most themes support widgets and provide what is called “widget” areas on your site where you can add widgets to.

Normally, this is going to be in your sidebar, but depending upon the theme, widgets can also be in the site’s header, in the footer, sometimes even below or above your content.

It all depends on the kind of theme you have installed on your site or blog.

As you can see, the only location where users can add widgets to their site using the theme shown above is in the site’s sidebar section.

In contrast, the WP theme shown below includes a number of different widgetized areas …

Below is an enlarged image of the widget panel of the above theme, where you can see how many widget areas are included in this specific WP theme …

How Do I Access My WP Widgets?

The Widgets panel is found within your WP admin area and can be accessed from the dashboard menu by going to Appearance > Widgets ….

This brings up your Widgets area in your browser window …

The Widgets section displays a list of all the widgets you have available.

On the right hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …

Widgets dragged from the “Available Widgets” section to “Widget Areas” like your sidebar, footer, etc. become immediately and available to visitors on your site.

In addition, your Widgets area includes an “Inactive Widgets” section that lets you remove widgets that you no longer want actively displayed on your site without losing their settings.

By default, your site already comes with a number of pre-installed widgets (e.g. widget 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 immediately to your site visitors …

Sometimes, whenever new plugins are installed on your website or blog, you will see that new widgets have also been added to your Widgets section …

Widgets Features: “Drag And Drop”

Widgets are great, because you can easily insert, activate, deactivate, rearrange and remove them within your Widgets area just by using “drag and drop” …

Using “drag and drop” technology also lets you easily reorder the layout of your website’s “widget” sections.

A newsletter opt-in form,
A “contact support” button, and
A couple of “click to phone” sales buttons from a widget WordPress plugin …

If you took a look inside the example site’s Widget area, you would see that these features display on the site’s sidebar menu in the same order as their corresponding widgets were arranged in the active widget area …

If we change the order these widgets in the Widget Area using the drag and drop method …

The widget features have now been reorganised in the sidebar …

As you can see this instantly changes the layout of your 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” banner (2) has been moved to the spot above the newsletter opt-in form (1) …

Pretty cool stuff, huh?

Let me just show you some more things worth knowing about widgets:

Widget Management – Preview Widgets

Depending upon the theme that you have installed on your site, you’re also able to manage 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 your live website.

You can do a bunch of edits to widgets in “preview” mode, like adding, removing and reorganising the currently added widgets to any widget areas that your theme makes available, and it’s all done 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 is a great feature of WordPress. You can work in “preview” mode inside the WordPress Theme Customise screen (Appearance > Customise) and see how your widget content will appear prior to publishing any changes (and avoid making errors), or change widgets “on the fly” using the Widget editor area as shown previously.

WordPress Widget Tutorial – Configuration

As I have shown you in an earlier example, WordPress lets you easily and quickly reorder how information is displayed in “widget areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse, using using “drag-and-drop” …

In the screenshot above, for example, you can see that we have quickly and easily redesigned the layout in the sidebar 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 within the sidebar widget area.

Now … what about the widgets themselves? Can the widgets be customised instead of simply added, removed and rearranged?

Absolutely!

With most traditionally-designed websites, you would need to edit code in the website’s templates to rearrange the order of elements, customise features on page elements like a member login section, or just add features like a page index, or a drop down menu of your content categories, a post archives section, custom menus, links to external sites, links to your recent posts, the latest post comments, a section displaying clickable ad banners, quotations or polls, RSS content, product catalogue images, social media share buttons, and more..

Most widgets offer additional options that allow you to further configure them. This includes making certain types of information hidden to your site visitors, but visible to registered users, displaying additional forms, fields, or data, specifying dimensions of sidebar images, videos, etc. and more …

How To Use WordPress Widgets

As you have just seen, widgets require no coding experience or programming expertise to use. Most widgets can be easily added to your WP website simply by activating a plugin and then dragging and dropping the plugin’s related widget into your “Active” widget area.

There are some tips and tricks for using widgets, however, and we will soon be adding more detailed step-by-step tutorials to this site showing you how to use different widgets in WordPress to boost the effectiveness of your website, plus many cool tips for getting the most benefit out of WordPress using widgets, so stay tuned and come back soon!

If you are a WordPress newbie, 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 get better results online. To learn more about using the WP web site publishing software please see our related posts section.

Did you enjoy learning about WordPress Widget Tutorial? Please post a comment below or take a moment to share this article with your friends.

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WordPress is huge and can sometimes be overwhelming about where to start. As you move on to the next Page, you will have a clearer picture of where to start and progress to building a professional WordPress Site.

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Disclaimer This site is not associated with WordPress or any of the WordPress products written about on this site. We may derive a financial benefit from sales of products advertised, reviewed or linked to from this site. The product details used in this review have been sourced from the plugin’s website and/or from sites that provide Premium WP Services

Using WordPress Widgets to Configure your Site

Using WordPress Widgets

One of the many great things about using WordPress is that you can easily add content and applications to your site and reconfigure elements of your site layout with no coding or programming skills required.

You can add, rearrange and remove various types of content and applications on your WordPress site’s sidebar menu (or header and footer sections depending on your theme) quickly and easily using a WordPress feature called a Widget.

In this tutorial you are going to learn more about using the widgets.

Note: In a separate tutorial, we’ll show you how to configure a number of widgets that come installed with WordPress by default.

Watch the video below and then complete the step-by-step tutorial to learn more about using widgets on your WordPress Website.

Using Widgets on Your WordPress Site

Widgets are self-contained modules of code that perform a specific function, such as adding a form, a text box or menu to your site. It also allows you to easily add, reorder and/or remove different types of content and programs on your site.

In WordPress, you can also “drag-and-drop” them around inside sections of your administration area to quickly rearrange the layout of your sidebars, headers and footers.

WordPress is written using a scripting language called PHP (Hypertext Preprocessor). It eliminates the need to know how to program PHP or manipulate PHP code to customize your site’s content and layout, and can be used to extend the functionality of a number of WordPress plugins. Many widgets even allow you to fine tune their settings to further enhance their functionality and usefulness.

Simply put, It allows you to:

Easily add content and functionality to your WordPress sidebar without having to touch any code,and
Rearrange how various elements display on your sidebar using simple drag-and-drop.

They were originally designed to provide a simple and easy way of giving WordPress users design and structure control of their WordPress Theme.

WordPress themes that are properly “widgetized” allow users to control many designs and structural aspects of their site’s sidebar, header, footer, and other areas.

Here are just some of the things you can add to your sidebar menus (and headers and footers, depending on your theme) using widgets:

List Of Pages
Blog Categories
Post Archives
Custom Menus
Links To External Sites
Links To Recent Posts / Most Popular Posts
Excerpts Of Recent Comments Added To Posts
Text and Graphic Images (e.g. Advertising banners)
Testimonials and Quotations
Poll / Survey – Questions and Results
Content from RSS feeds
Newsletter subscription / opt-in forms
Videos
Social Media Buttons
Display Widgets From Others Sites (e.g. Facebook Friends)
Etc.

We provide a number of detailed step-by-step tutorials in our WordPress Training section that show you how to add all of the above functions and more to your site using widgets.

How To Customize Your Site’s Layout With Widgets

With most static websites, changing the site’s layout requires editing code in the site’s pages or templates.

With WordPress you can completely rearrange how information is displayed in areas like your site’s sidebars, footers and navigation menus with just a few clicks of your mouse button. This is because the built-in Widgets feature of WordPress lets you rearrange information on your sidebar and footers quickly and easily using “drag-and-drop” technology …

In the above screenshot, you can see that we have rearranged the sidebar layout by switching the search and testimonial sections around. This was easily done by simply dragging and dropping the widget elements into different positions in the sidebar widget section.

It requires no code experience or expertise. They can easily be added, removed, and rearranged in the Widgets panel of your WordPress administration area …

Some widgets are “fixed” in that they provide little to no configuration options, other than to add an optional title to the widget, as shown in the example below …

Some WordPress offers various customization options and the ability to specify and configure settings. This includes enabling forms or fields, including or excluding data and information, displaying optional images, and more …

Let’s take a look at an example so you can see exactly how to reconfigure your site’s sidebar layout by rearranging them in the sidebar section …

In the screenshot below, you can see that the right hand sidebar of the site displays a newsletter sign-up form at the top (1), then a “contact support” button below it (2), and a “click to call” function below that (3) …

To change these features around, first log into your WordPress admin area …

Once you have logged in, click on Appearance > Widgets …

This brings up your Widgets area. The area displays a list of all of the ones available. On the right hand side of the window, you can see your “active” widgets …

The ones dragged from the “Available Widgets” section to “Widget Areas” like your sidebar, footer, etc. They become immediately active on your site.

In addition, your Widgets area includes an “Inactive Widgets” section that lets you remove widgets you no longer want to remain actively displayed on your site without losing its settings …

As mentioned earlier, your Widgets area will also display different sections for your site, depending on the WordPress theme you choose. For example, some themes give you multiple sidebar and footer sections, and themes with multiple templates may include sections specific for each template …

Note: Some may require additional settings to be configured after being made active.

By default, your WordPress installation comes with a number of widgets (e.g. For displaying your pages, links, posts, post categories, adding text, adding RSS feeds, adding tags, adding a search box, etc …). These are available on the default WordPress theme “right out of the box” …

New ones can be added to your site whenever you install new plugins (we cover plugins in separate tutorials). In most cases, however, installing a new plugin does not automatically make the widget associate with that plugin become active on your site.

To active one, drag the widget from the “Available Widgets” area, to an active area (e.g. The “Main Sidebar”) by clicking on the widget and holding your mouse button down, then dragging the widget element to the position in your sidebar, footer, etc. Where you want the widget to appear…

In this tutorial example, the widgets have already been configured to display a newsletter form, support button and the click call plugin…

As you can see from the screenshot below, the features appear on the site in the same order as they have been arranged in the widget bar …

Let’s now rearrange the order of the above widgets in the Sidebar Widget Area, using the click, drag and drop method …

The widget features have now been reordered in the sidebar …

This immediately changes the layout of your site’s sidebar.

Note in the screenshot below that the “click to call” feature (3) is now at the top of the sidebar menu, and the “contact us” graphic button (2) is located above the newsletter sign-up form (1) …

Tip #1: A really useful widget is the Text widget …

A text lets you insert just about anything you want in your sidebar or other widget sections, such as single lines or paragraphs of text, images, media, forms, etc…. By simply typing in text or adding HTML into the widget content area (you can also add an optional title in the Title field). Remember to click Save to save your settings…

Tip #2: Click on the little triangle in the Widget corner to display the settings for that widget…

When the widget expands, you can change and save your settings, or click Delete to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section. Click on the triangle or click Close to close the widget…

As soon as your changes are saved, your site will automatically update the widget settings and display your latest changes to your site visitors.

Tip #3: If you see widgets showing up on your site’s sidebar that aren’t listed under your sidebar in the Appearance > Widgets section, it’s because with some themes, until you add widgets to your sidebar, the theme will display its own default set of widgets, which will not be listed in your sidebar area.

Once you add one or more widgets to your sidebar, the default set of widgets will no longer be used.

If you don’t want anything to show up in your sidebar, just add a blank Text widget to your sidebar area.

Tip #4: If, for some reason, you find that you are unable to use the drag-and-drop function to move widgets around (e.g. Using a mobile device that doesn’t support drag-and-drop), then you can still work with widgets, by enabling the accessibility mode for WordPress widgets on your site.

How To Enable Accessibility Mode For Widgets on Your Site

Log into your WordPress administration area and navigate to the Widgets section …

Click on Screen Options on the top right hand corner of the screen …

Click on Enable accessibility mode …

Once accessibility mode has been enabled, the ones in the “Available Widgets” section will display an Add link, and the widgets in the “Active” section will display an Edit link …

If you click on a Widget’s Add link in the “Available” section …

A screen will display the selected ones with options for customizing the Widget’s settings, selecting the location to add the Widget, and drop-down menus for choosing the position of the Widget in the specified location (e.g. Position “1”, “2”, “3”, etc…).

Click Save Widget to add the widget to the “Active Widgets” section, or the Cancel button to return to the previous screen …

In you click on an active Widget’s Edit link …

A screen will display the selected Widget with options for changing the Widget’s settings, reassigning the Widget’s location, and drop-down menus for rearranging the position of the Widget.

Click Save Widget to return to the “Active Widgets” section, or click the Delete button to remove the widget from the “Active Widgets” section …

Click on the Disable accessibility mode in the Screen Options section to restore the drag-and-drop function to your Widgets …

Congratulations! Now you know how to add and remove Widgets from your WordPress site. To learn how to configure a number of different WordPress widgets for your site’s sidebar, see this tutorial.