One of the best things about WordPress is it’s user friendly interface, which makes it easy for each blogger to tailor their site to their own needs. Widgets are one of the many ways that WordPress makes this possible, and understanding how to use them is important.
Widgets are the items that you add to your sidebar. They can be anything from a list of posts or categories, to a calendar, Twitter feed or an opt-box. They serve to make your blog easier to use and navigate, as well as providing an opportunity for you to give your readers more information, or give them something to interact with.
The Widgets Page
Select "Widgets" from the appearance heading on the dashboard
The next screen will be made up of three main areas. On the right you will have a list of the sidebars available in your current theme. The top left hand section is “Available Widgets.” These are all of the different widgets you can choose from at the moment, but certain plugins will create additional widgets for you to use. Below “Available Widgets,” you also have “Inactive Widgets,” which we’ll discuss in a moment.
Drag your widget into your sidebar and drop it when the dotted line appears
Adding Widgets
Now, each of the sidebars on the right of the page can be accessed by clicking on the little dropdown arrow next to it’s name. Once you’ve chosen a sidebar and a widget to add, just drag the widget over to the sidebar. When you have the widget in the right spot a dotted rectangle will appear. Drop the widget in place by releasing the mouse button and the widget will be added, and it’s options will be displayed for you to configure.
Different widgets will have different options, particularly if they were created by a plugin. Some widgets (like the Search widget, for example) don’t have any options for you to configure.
Once you have all of your options set, just click the “Save” button at the bottom of the widget. In recent versions of WordPress, as you save each individual widget it gets added to your blog in real time (in the past you have to click a button to save all the changes).
Text Widgets
Text widgets are easily the simplest and also the most powerful widgets at your disposal. You can place any text or HTML code you want into a text widget to display on your sidebar. This means you can use them to display a message, add links or even display images and optin forms. Text widgets can take on almost any form, so let your imagination go nuts!
To use a text widget, just drag it onto the sidebar like you would anything else. Then a box like the one on the left will appear with two fields. One for the title and the other for the content. Enter whatever text or code you want and click save you’ll be good to go. If you are using the widget to display text with multiple paragraphs you will need to add the paragraph tags unless you check the box at the bottom to automatically add them!
Always remember to double check your text widget’s output once you save it. Pull up you blog, test any links, etc. to make sure everything works right.
Inactive Widgets
The third and final section of the widgets screen is the area reserved for inactive widgets. These are all the widgets you don’t want to use, but don’t want to loose forever. Let’s say you were to use a text widget to create an optin box for your email newsletter, but wanted to pull it down while you changed themes on your blog. If you drag that widget into the “Available Widgets” section, it will be removed from your sidebar and deleted completely. However, if you drag it down to the “Inactive Widgets” section, it will stay there, with all of the code you added intact until you are ready to use it again.
Managing Widgets With Different Themes
Before we wrap up this lesson I wanted to mention one last thing. Your widgets are grouped under sidebars, and those sidebars have specific names. For example the theme I am currently using has a “Primary Sidebar” and a “Secondary Sidebar.” Not all themes use the same titles for their sidebars, so if I were to switch themes I might wind up with “Left Sidebar” and “Right Sidebar.” The reason I bring this up is that WordPress will only display the widgets in the sidebar you placed them in (with that specific name). So if you switch themes and the sidebar you were using no longer exists, you won’t have any widgets to display after the new theme is up.
For this reason, you should always move all of your widgets down to the Inactive Widgets section before switching themes, so that you can access them once the new theme is up.
Hopefully this lesson helps you get up and running with widgets. Leave your feedback and questions in the comments!
Hello,
I am trying to add the WP Opt-in widget to two different page templates (home and inner). But I am only able to drag one instance of the widget over to the sidebar. So right now it’s showing up in the home page sidebar but I need it to show up in the inner page’s sidebar as well. When I dragged it to the home sidebar, it disappeared from the Available Widgets area. Any suggestions on how to simply copy a second instance of the widget to the other page template?
Thanks!
Hi Dani
Sorry for the long delay in getting back to you – I hope that you’ve already found a solution to your problem, but I wanted to reply in case you were still working on it.
The fact that the widget disappears is a function of the plugin – some plugins create widgets that can be used multiple times, while others only work once (sounds like this is the case for your plugin), which causes an obvious issue for someone like you with multiple sidebars.
I can see
twothree possible ways around this, but unfortunately, both involve messing with your theme code a bit.First Option: Eliminate one of the sidebars
I can’t provide exact step by step instructions, because the process depends partially on how the theme was written, but if you don’t actually NEED two different sidebars, you could modify your theme to use one on every page.
Second Option:
Some plugin developers will provide instructions on their website to display the plugin at will by adding a function to your theme (in the header, footer, sidebar, wherever you might want it). Checking with the developer’s website may reveal the PHP function you’d need to trigger a second instance of the plugin (you’d just have to paste it into the second sidebar’s code in
sidebar.phpThird Option (popped into my head while I was typing
):
Add the optin to a sidebar and then view that page. If you pull up the source code (under the “View” menu of your browser), you should then be able to locate the code that generates the form.
Theoretically, copying that form code into a text widget on the other sidebar should recreate the form – but since you were adding the form code manually on that sidebar, changes you make on the plugin settings screen probably wouldn’t carry over to the second sidebar – you’d need to replace the code if you modified anything.
Let me know if this is still something you’re working on, or if these answers don’t point you in the right direction!
Hi, I just stumbled on your site while trying to figure out my sidebar widget. I’m using Coraline, and my primary sidebar widget won’t close! I click “close” and then click the “down arrow” beside the Primary Widget Area title. But when I go back to check, the tab is still open. It’s keeping my other sidebar widgets from showing. Any ideas? And keep in mind, I’m very unknowledgable about all this stuff!
@Dianna
Hi Dianna – sorry for the delayed response.
If I’m reading your problem correctly, it sounds like you’re having an issue with the default widget in your primary sidebar. Most theme designers write some default content into the sidebars of their blogs so that the space isn’t just blank when the theme first loads. That default widget is removed when you add one of your own to that specific sidebar.
As far as the primary sidebar tab always being open, WordPress automatically opens the primary sidebar for you when you load the widget page – closing it does not remove the sidebar.
The problem you describe of the primary sidebar blocking your other widgets is very strange indeed. My advice would be to check the theme options page and look for a way to enable/disable specific sidebars. It could be that the sidebar you are trying to use simply isn’t active at the moment.
Good luck, let me know if you run into any more trouble!