Most WordPress themes support widgets. Depending on your WordPress theme , widget areas may be in the header , footer, sidebar , right below your blog post content, and almost any other area.
WordPress by default comes with several widgets including categories, tag cloud, navigation menu, calendar, search bar, recent posts, and more. Many WordPress plugins also add their own widgets which you can use to add plugin functionality to different sections. For example, you can add an email newsletter form to your sidebar, or add a contact form to your footer with a plugin like WPForms. Widgets can be really helpful in helping your visitors to navigate your site and encouraging them to take actions like signing up for your newsletter or following you on social media.
When you first start a blog , setting up your widgets is an important step. You can find the list of available widgets on your own site by going to the Appearance » Widgets page from the admin sidebar. Under each of your installed widgets, you see a brief description that helps to explain its purpose and use.
The comments are their own section, for customizing them, you would want to take a look at our article on styling it below:. Only on posts and pages at the moment but maybe as Gutenberg gets updates there will be something. I want to add icon widgets on home page and have them link to my categories. Only widget areas are bottom of pages. Any suggestions? Not a comment but a question. Try switching to a default theme and see if you can see widgets in Admin area. Thank you for your post on this.
You saved me from banging my head against the wall longer than necessary. I am rebuilding a website with very little experience with WordPress. In the Widget section or page I clicked something and it now says manage with live preview. I cannot add a widget. How do I get rid of this so I can add a widget that I downloaded? Thank you for your time. I was looking to find out the maximum number of widgets you can add to wordpress. I may end up having a widget per page!
Thanks so much. But you can also add lots more widgets by installing plugins or coding your own. These can cover a vast range of content types, such as media, social media feeds, navigation, search, maps and lots more.
In fact, the biggest challenge is often choosing between all the options and not going overboard. You should use a widget whenever you want to add extra content to one or more pages in your site and when I say page, I include posts, archives etc.
Think about how many users will need access to each widget and how important it is when you decide where to place it. Widgets in the sidebar will be more prominent than those in the footer, which some users may not even see. So a latest posts widget or a call to action widget might be better off in the sidebar where people have more chance of interacting with them, while a social media feed could go in the footer.
The best way to understand the possibilities offered by WordPress widgets is by looking at some examples of them. It lets you display a list of your most recent posts in the sidebar or footer of every page on your site, increasing the possibility that people will browse the site and read a number of posts.
The Recent Posts widget comes pre-installed with WordPress. It lets you set how many posts you want to show and what heading you want to give the widget. If you want to add extra functionality, you can install a plugin for an alternative widget like WordPress Popular Posts , which displays the most popular content.
Alternatively, the Advanced Random Posts widget refreshes every time the user visits a new screen. Want to show visitors how vibrant your site is and how much your audience is engaging with your content?
The Recent Comments widget displays the latest comments on your site, giving visitors the opportunity to navigate straight to those comments and join in the discussion.
The Recent Comments widget comes with WordPress. Again, if you want to add extra functionality you can install a third-party comments plugin such as the WP Social Comments widget which lets people comment using their Facebook account: good for social media engagement. A great use of a widget is to encourage people to take action, and you can do this with a call to action widget.
Your widget could be a simple button, or you could create something more bespoke using a text widget or HTML widget, or even an image widget, all of which come pre-installed with WordPress. There are a few options for this: the Categories or Tag Cloud widgets and the Navigation Menu widget.
The Navigation Menu widget lets you create an custom navigation menu as well as the main navigation menu in your site, and then add that to a widget area. You could even add your main navigation menu to a widget area, although this will only work if you have a small navigation menu. Adding a navigation menu to the footer of your site will encourage people reaching the end of a post to navigate around your site. Alternatively, you can use the built-in Categories widget to display a list of the categories in your site, or the Tag Cloud widget to make it easy for people to access tag archives.
Adding media to your sidebar or footer will bring your site to life and give users something to look at or interact with. You can use the built-in Image widget to display any image in your sidebar or footer, and it lets you turn that image into a link too.
Alternatively, the Video widget lets you stream video from YouTube or Vimeo right into the widget area of your site. One way to get access to social media widgets for the biggest platforms Facebook, Twitter, Instagram is to install the Jetpack plugin , which includes all of these and lots more.
Alternatively, all the social media platforms have their own plugins, available free via the plugin directory. Or you can find third party plugins that will let you customize the way you display your social media feed. You could put this in the sidebar where people will easily be able to see it, or in the header for added visibility if your theme includes a widget area there. If you want people to contact you, ask questions or sign up to a mailing list , you could add a form to your sidebar.
If your business is based in a physical location and you want people to be able to find you easily, adding a map widget to your site will help. The Login with Ajax widget gives you a login form in your widget meaning people can log into your site from any page. A really simple but incredibly useful widget is the Search widget , which comes preloaded with WordPress. Add this to your sidebar or header and you make it easier for people to find things on your site. If you want to boost the power of your search widget, you can install the free WP Google Search widget, which uses Google search.
The more there are, the less likely users are to notice them. Instead, focus on two or three key widgets for the sidebar. And if you have any extra widget areas in your theme , decide which widgets to put in those.
Make sure they fit with the layout and design of your site. There is a vast array of available widgets, so it can bed difficult to choose which one to install. If one of the pre-installed widgets does what you need it to, then use that. It will save you time and mean less code running on your site. The WordPress plugin directory has thousands of free widget plugins that will give you more widgets to choose from.
As well as that, lots of other plugins also include widgets, such as an ecommerce plugin giving you a cart widget and more. Sometimes these will offer more functions or a more intuitive interface. You can add widgets to any active widget areas provided by your theme.
Depending on your WordPress theme , you might find you have widget areas in multiple places. Most themes have widget areas in the sidebar and footer. But some also have them in other places, like below or above the content or in the header. How to put yourself on the path to achieve all of that? For once, what if you start a Believe it or not, but knowing how to make a website from scratch is one of the more essential skills you should master as a small business owner in this day and age.
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When you purchase through referral links on our site, we earn a commission. Learn More. This includes what they are, how to use them, and what options they provide. Here's everything you need to know about WordPress widgets.
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