What are WordPress Widgets?

For those wondering, what are WordPress Widgets? The answer can be found in understanding what a widget does and how you can use widgets for your WordPress blog. Widgets are used to optimize the look of your WordPress blog and website. Choosing the best WordPress widgets are great for enhancing your site.

The usefulness of WordPress widgets is just another reason as to why WordPress is an easy-to-use and creative resource in online website development. WordPress Widgets (WPW) work like a plugin for your website and a simple way to arrange the tools on your website.

The WordPress widgets tool provides those who are new to web development or those who have experience building a website or blog with an easy way to arrange various elements of the web page sidebar without having to use or change any code of your website. There is a huge selection of WordPress widgets available to use on your website or blog that range from text widgets to RSS widgets as well as widget-ready themes.

What are WordPress Widgets?

The sidebar widgets offered with WordPress allow the website manger or designer to move the widgets around or change them up according to your need. A widget is a useful tool that you might want on your sidebar with category information, most recent comments or a link to your website admin page. There is also a widget that allows you to type whatever you want into the sidebar to manipulate or change as you see fit for your website or blog.

Using text widgets with WPW:

As is the case with most sites, the built-in text widget can be used to add new features to your website’s sidebar. The WordPress widget plugin works to allow the web designer to dictate the number of text widgets needed. Once you have specified how many text widgets that are needed, those widgets will be added to the available widgets column in the presentation, sidebar widget admin panel. If you are looking for a way to change the options of the widget, simply click t he icon on the right side of the widget to enter the options menu. Here you can enter in a description or title for the widget in both text and HTML mode. There are a variety of text widgets available. Each of the content suppliers of the text widget information is available with the necessary code for the web designers to copy and paste into the widget to be displayed on the website or blog. These range from Babelfish Yahoo Translation, BannerBot, Pandora, Youtube and Etsy Mini-Shop.

Using RSS widgets with WPW:

There are a variety of RSS widgets to also use with your WordPress site or WordPress blog with a built-in RSS widget that regularly adds feeds to your sidebar. This WordPress widget plugin allows you to specify the number of RSS widgets you want for your website or blog. Like with the text widgets, once you have decided how many widgets you need, you can specify the particular number and it will be added to the available widgets column in the presentation, sidebar widget administration panel. You can enter in the URL needed to dictate the feed by clicking on the icon on the right side of the widget where you can also enter in a description of the feed and how many items  you would like to be displayed from the chosen RSS feed. There are a variety of RSS feeds you can use in the widgets on your website or blog including Doogate, del.icio.us, eBay, Google, Monster, Yahoo and more.

There is a wide range of flexibility for your website or WordPress blog that you can get out of the WordPress widget features. It is best to know what look you want for your website before you begin adding the widgets. There is also the flexibility of changing the widgets whenever you want or as you change your website. The WordPress widget tools allow for that kind of flexibility.