WordPress widgets allow to add additional content and features to a website.
People use widgets in WordPress for many reasons. Widgets provide an easy way to add various types of content and functionality to website sidebars and widget-ready areas.
Thus, the following are some of the common uses of widgets:
- Displaying recent posts, comments, or archives
- Adding social media links or buttons
- Displaying ads or promotional banners
- Displaying custom menus
- Adding a search form
- Displaying a calendar or upcoming events
- Adding a tag cloud or list of categories
Widgets are easy to manage. They can be added, removed, and reordered without needing to access the code of a website.
Manage widgets
You can manage widgets on Widgets page:
- Navigate to Appearance → Widgets in WordPress dashboard. On the left side of this page, you’ll find all the widgets that you can add to the widget areas on the right.
- To add a widget, drag it from the left and drop it into a widget area on the right. You can also change the order of widgets in the widget area by using the drag and drop feature.
- Once you add a widget, it should expand automatically, or you can click the arrow to expand it and customize its settings.
- Click the Save button.
It is important to note that WordPress block themes typically do not include widget areas as they fully support the Site Editor tool, rendering them unnecessary.
Widget areas are typically supported in both hybrid and classic WordPress themes. However, the number of widget areas may vary among different themes.
If the “Widgets” link is not present in the dashboard, it indicates that the theme does not offer any additional widget areas.