How to Add a Widget on WordPress

Hi. Welcome to BuildMySiteForFree.com. Today’s tutorial is about adding widgets to your blog. And widgets are actually really cool because it’s an application that enables the user to perform a specific function or to access a service. So when you want to add a widget to your blog, what you’re going to do is scroll down to Appearance on your navigation menu.

 

And once you’ve opened up the submenu, you click the Widgets link and this, of course, will bring you to the Widgets page. So just to show you what you’re viewing right now, you have all the available widgets to activate and deactivate for your blog right here. And then on the right side of the page, you have your primary widget area, which is usually always on your right side of your blog. And as you scroll down, you have other widget areas on your blog, which could be left, right, top, bottom, positioned on your blog.

 

But what we’re going to do now is just stick with putting widgets in our primary widget area, and as you can see, these are all the ones I currently have on my blog. And just to show you, here, we have search recent posts, search recent comments, and so on.

 

If I come to my blog, you will see. Here are all those widgets. Recent posts, recent comments, archives, categories, et cetera. And now what I’m going to show you how to do is add a widget, and it’s actually very, very easy. All you do is click on the widget that you want, cover over it with your mouse, click down, and just drag it over to the area.

 

And I want to put it right here on the top. And once I’ve done that, there are options that I can configure. So for this specific widget, I would just insert a title for it. So I’ll just make it say, “Post Calendar.” Save it. And each widget has different options. So for instance, your search option has the same thing. You only add in a title, but for example, your recent posts widget, you have to insert your title and the number of posts you want to show.

 

And then your archives, you have to also insert a title, but then you have options to choose of how you want it displayed and how many post counts you want shown. So you choose the options you want according to the widget that you’re going to be adding to your blog. Now that I’ve added the actual widgets at the top, I can also always come back and take it off by scrolling it right back and deactivating it. Or if I want to change the setup in how they’re formatted, I can just scroll down to the position that I want. And as you can see, the dotted line box is where it would be moved to.

 

And now just to show you what it actually looks like, here is the blog. And you can see: The calendar I just added has been put right on the top of my widget post. And one other great feature is that you never actually have to click a save button. It automatically saves it for you.

 

And this is your video on how to add a widget to you blog. Please stay tuned for more videos on widgets. Thank you for watching.

 

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About the Author

Andy Johnson

Andy Johnson has been on the Internet since the its dawn(ie his first computer program was recorded on cassette tape) and his first hard drive cost about as much his current MacBook. His first byline was in 1993 for a local newspaper rag he eventually helmed, and his last “real job” was at a computer start up which ended when it ended. Throughout it all he’s freelanced and blogged. Now he is mesmerized by Search Engine Optimization forever trying to “rise to the top” for the right reasons. He’s been married to his wife Julia for as long as he can remember and has two lovely, wonderful children. He looks forward to sharing the latest in the technical best for all the online entrepreneurs.