From listing blogroll links and pages, to displaying custom text, a search bar and even a calendar, the WordPress sidebar has a lot to offer. But what if you don’t want all that information in your sidebar? Or what if you want to rearrange the order of your sidebar content? Take advantage of WordPress’ Widgets to display only the content you want, and in the exact order you want!

Introducing Widgets

You can find the Widgets under the Design tab of the Dashboard. On the left side is a list of all the sidebar options (or Widgets) available, and any sidebar widgets currently in use (if any) are displayed on the right. If you have multiple sidebars, you need to be sure to select the one you want to edit in the drop-down menu at the top of the right-hand column. Be sure to choose “show” once you’ve selected the sidebar you want to edit.

Fig. 1 - The Widgets page of the WordPress Dashboard.

Adding and Editing Widgets

To add widgets to your sidebar, you just click the “Add” link on any widgets you want to include. You can rearrange the order that the content appears in by dragging and dropping the widgets in the right-hand column into the desired order. Hit “Save Changes” when you’re done.

Fig. 2 - Adding Widgets to your sidebar.

The last thing to add is that you can edit different things about each of the Widgets. Choose “Edit” on the Widget you’d like to edit, and the Widget will display the properties you can change. All of the Widgets allow you the option of changing the title. For instance, you can name your pages list “Navigation” instead of “Pages,” if you’d like. Some Widgets allow you determine other properties as well. The Recent Posts Widget, shown below, allows you to choose how many recent posts are listed.

Fig. 3 - Editing individual Widget properties

The Power to Create an Effective Sidebar

Widgetizing your sidebar gives you complete control over sidebar content. You can decide what sidebar content is vital to your site and most useful to your audience, and what content is just too much information. Take a look at your sidebar today. Does it have all the information it needs? Or does it overwhelm visitors with all its options? If so, the power is in your hands–just widgetize it!

*A note: while most WordPress themes support a widgetized sidebar, some older themes and some custom-designed themes won’t. If you play with your sidebar widgets and discover that when you view your blog, the sidebar either doesn’t display the changes you made, or appears broken in some way or another, it probably means that your theme doesn’t support widgets. To fix a sidebar broken by widgets, simply go back to the Widgets page, remove all the Widgets, and click “Save.”

Filed under: WordPress by Genevieve |