In the journey of designing your WordPress site, perhaps your first, there are a few basic features you’ll want to become familiar with. For example, you’ll need to learn how to use default content types such as pages and posts. Very important also, you will need to know how to use WordPress widgets to enhance your website design in Nigeria.
WordPress widgets are the simple elements you can use to build and design your website to the taste you wanted.
Widgets enable you to easily add text, links, and other various types of information to designated areas (determined by your theme). The default WordPress widgets are sufficient for many sites, but you can also download additional options from the internet if you want.
In this article, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about widgets. This includes what they are, how to utilize them in designing your website and the beautiful options they provide. Plus, we’ll introduce a few plugins you can use to add even more widgets to your site.
What are WordPress widgets?
WordPress is designed to be a simple technical beginner-friendly platform that anyone can use. Even if you have no simple technical skills, WordPress makes it easy for you to customize your site to fit your needs.
So widgets are one of the options WordPress provides to make that happen. A widget is a pre-built module; a graphical user interface, that adds a specific feature to your site, such as a search bar or a list of recent posts. It can be placed into one of your site’s ‘widget areas’, which are defined by your theme and are usually located in the sidebars and/or footer.
Some of the beautiful advantages of utilizing widgets in your site design include:
• It helps your audience find what they’re looking for
Importance of WordPress Widget
1. Build your brand
You can use widgets to add an “About Me” section in your sidebar which lets you introduce yourself to visitors and the audience, in turn building yourself a brand.
2. Expand your community
Widgets afford you the opportunity to display your social feed on your website itself, or just link to your accounts on other platforms if you want to encourage visitors to follow you there too.
Knowing how widgets work is very essential since they are a very simple way to enhance your site and include the exact elements you want.
How to add a widget to your WordPress site in Nigeria
To add a widget to your site, you simply need to log in to your dashboard on your site, and then navigate to appearance.
Here, you will see the list of the default WordPress widgets. Each of them has a title with a brief description. On the right, you with find more designated widget areas, with headers (such as Sidebar or Footer) to tell you where they’re located. Depending on your theme, there may already be some widgets in these areas.
Now, to add a new widget, simply click on it and drag it over into a widget area:
You can also do the reverse to remove widgets from your website. Also, you can also drag the individual widgets up or down to rearrange them.
If you view the front end of your site, you should see the new feature.
Another beautiful thing is that it’s also possible to add widgets to your website using the WordPress Customizer. The process is quite similar, just located inside the WordPress Customizer. The simple advantage of that is that you can see what your widgets will look like on the front end of your website in real-time.
Now let’s move forward to take a look at some of the most important features you have access to in designing your site:
WordPress default widgets
WordPress naturally comes with a useful collection of widgets. But the ones you use will depend on your site’s needs, aim and audience. Nevertheless, there are a few that are worth checking out. Let’s take a look.
1. Text widget
This is the most versatile of the modules. If you drag one over to your widget area and open it by clicking on the arrow in the top right corner, you will see two boxes:
In designing your site, you can utilize the text widget to add nearly anything to your sidebar. This could be a simple text, a collection of links, or a media file.
2. Search widget
This module widget is very simple and straightforward. The only customization choice here is the title (which is optional). However, this widget is very crucial for your site. Since it will add a fully functional search bar to your site, it provides your visitors with a search feature that helps them more easily find what they’re looking for on your site.
3. Recent post widget
As the name implies, you can use this widget to add a list of your most recently published posts to your widget area. This is a hack to encourage visitors to explore your latest content. You can also add a custom title, configure how many posts will be displayed (up to ten), and decide whether to display each post’s date.
Plugins for WordPress widgets
While the default WordPress widgets are sufficient for you to design your site. You may want additional options to enhance more beauty.
Fortunately, it isn’t hard to find plugins that will expand your collection of widgets.
For example, there are a number of plugins that simply add a single new widget to your dashboard. These include:
The Popular Posts WordPress Widgets
This plugin provides you with a customizable widget that helps you to show off your most visited posts within a particular time range.
The Image Widget: With this additional widget, you will get a more flexible and customizable image module than the default one that WordPress provides.
1. The Recent Posts Widget With Thumbnails
An upgrade to the existing Recent Posts widget, this one lets you add a thumbnail image to each post in the list.
If you’re still looking for something more comprehensive, you can also find plugins that overhaul the entire widget experience. Let’s check some out:
2. Origin Widgets Bundle
This plugin provides you with a whole new collection of widgets, such as a Slider Widget and a Social Links Widget.
3. Custom Sidebars
This plugin makes your existing widget areas more customizable, such as by enabling you to add different widgets to specific pages.
The thing is whatever you’d like to do with your widgets and sidebars, there’s a plugin that can help. With a little effort from your side, you can use these widgets to design your site to perfection in no time
Conclusion
Widgets are simple WordPress feature you can use to design your website. Using widgets, you can customize your sidebars with no technical knowledge of design or coding.
Also, adding them to your theme’s widget areas is as simple as dragging and dropping them, and then tweaking a few settings. Very simple!
If you want to learn how to blog, you can read our Zero to hero blogging content to get started.