Todays tutorial is about How To Use WordPress Widgets For Beginners.
Now, what are Widgets? How do we use widgets? Where do we put widgets? Why do we even want widgets? We’re going to show you we’re going to talk about it. We’re going to explain what it’s all about.CMS of WordPress The Admin Section-How To Use WordPress Widgets For Beginners
Let’s go get started, let’s go to the CMS of WordPress The Admin section, and under the appearance widgets, if you’re in some other option, you just hover over the appearance then you choose WordPress widgets.
And once you come into the widget section, you’ll be displayed with something like this, so you’ll have available widgets that you can use on the left. And on the right, you have placements on where you can put those widgets.
Now, this changes the right section and the left section. the left section changes depending on what plugins you have depending on other parts of the theme-specific themes have different features, allocated sections and on the right the same with the theme, theme by theme it changes what would be displayed here
So we at present are using what are we using we’re just using the 2021 theme just the standard theme and with that classic theme comes to placement to put WordPress widgets and in this theme
Themes-How To Use WordPress Widgets For Beginners
So we at present are using what are we using we’re just using the 2021 theme just the standard theme and with that classic theme comes to placement to put widgets and in this theme
It allows us to place widgets content you know things sections like categories imagery video navigation recent posts. These types of things are available to us. They allow us to put them inside the footer and if we scroll to the bottom.
You’ll notice there’s this big empty area here. So to add items, to the placeholders in the theme. We can let’s say I want to add Categories. I want to add some meta you could just leave click and drag let’s say I want to add navigation, okay with meta I will leave the title empty with navigation I’ll use the primary menu and categories I’ll leave just going to click save.
With most WordPress widgets, all you do is just drag them across, and they automatically save you see here it says save. You can also bring them out just drag them out. If you don’t want them, you can open and close, by using these arrows. You can organize them only by dragging them up and down I can move that one first that one second.
Again, I can just drag it out; it gets rid of it.
Build Website Category-How To Use WordPress Widgets For Beginners
I can left-click, drag in it brings it in. So it’s very user friendly allows us to drag and drop. So now this is what our website looks currently. If I refresh the screen you’ll now notice we suddenly got some areas in here we’ve got the categories we created in a previous tutorial. Which was Build Website Category we’ve got some meta information, and we’ve also got the top navigation categories these categories up here. We now have them placed down here, so WordPress widgets are super cool that allows you to add stuff in specific areas let’s um just go to Appearances themes and let me, for example, activate this Astra theme that we had before. So I’m just going to click activate okay, there it is. Now when I come back to widgets, you’ll notice that there are suddenly a lot more sections available Now this is because each theme is different each theme has these pre-coded sections of the website where you can add widgets too you can do this yourself, there entails knowing PHP code and adding and changing some of the core files and things like that but later on, when we dive a lot deeper we’ll actually be using an element or where we can create our own fun functionality. Still, for now, we’ll be using the actual elements that are pre-created inside of this already.
Astra Theme-How To Use WordPress Widgets For Beginners
For this theme, this Astra theme that we installed before in a previous tutorial allows us to change the primary sidebar add stuff to the header footer, and these are the footer sections.
So if I come back and refresh you’ll notice that this is the Astra theme that we installed in the previous tutorial and at the bottom, you have these four sections.
You have the archives we have search we have two missing areas So if I come to widget one you’ll notice we have archives widget, two we have searched and in three and four there’s nothing in there
I’m just going to stick meta in there, and I’m going to add a calendar okay just going to come back to the front end of the website refresh, and you’ll now notice that we have these sections in there you can also do it on the pages. So let’s say for example on the contact page depending on how the theme is created depending on if they allow you and have placed sidebars in already you can come up to edit the page as long as you are logged into the website just going to open that up in a new tab by holding down, control
and clicking I’m going to come down, and you’ll notice here, under Astra settings We can choose whether we want to have a sidebar on the left or a sidebar on the right, so just for an example, I’m going to select the right sidebar what the right sidebar means is it pretty much looks like this page where you have the content on the left and then on the right, you have these options, and in this particular example, we’ll have a placeholder to place widgets allows to put extra information in on the right sidebar So whatever we add to the primary sidebar will eventually get added to the right or left sidebar, so I’m just going to choose the right sidebar. I’m going to update, and you’ll notice that once
Information, Categories, Meta-How To Use WordPress Widgets For Beginners
I refresh the page here. We suddenly see some information. We have categories we have meta we have our top navigation. Again, this is because we have categories meta navigation, so widgets are super cool.
They’re straightforward to use if the template allows widgets in certain areas. When there aren’t certain areas in your theme, so, for example, let’s say you wanted a right sidebar. Your theme didn’t actually happen to have that then WordPress widgets become a little bit more complicated because you need to do some PHP coding you need to add specific code to the pages to allow the right sidebar to be there to enable you to actually, be able to drag and drop this stuff into widgets.
Final Word-How To Use WordPress Widgets For Beginners
So this is a sort of overview of how you manage widgets. How you install widgets like I say this stuff on the left will change depending on your plugins, depending on your theme.
You might have more options inside of here you might be like this one. You might be able to add forms, but on a more basic type of theme, you might not be able to. So this is cool.
