While many WordPress developers rely on the convenient and customizable functionality of widgets, they often tend to make plugins of them.
In fact, some beginners probably could not tell you the difference between the two! To give a brief introduction, some widgets are delivered by default with WordPress, many are included with specific plugins and plugins can exist as a widget, or add features that include a widget. To further clarify, a widget, in itself, is not a type of plugin or extension on WordPress.
Without widgets, footers, and other page template sidebars (like blog archives and category pages) would not be the same.
So, we're going to give widgets the attention they deserve.
Here are some WordPress widgets, which you should use in your web development projects.
WordPress widgets: default widgets
First, let's take a look at the default widgets that come with WordPress.
Widget Archive
The "Archives" widget allows you to share clickable links of articles, classified by month and year. It can provide an alternative method for theOrganisation of content, but may seem like more eyesore than anything else.
Think of it this way: the path " Archives> May 2016 Does not actually tell the visitor what the content refers to.
The plugin " Compact Archives Widget Can help consolidate articles by month and years in a visually appealing format.
Calendar Widget
Another tool for organizing links to blog posts is the “Calendar Widget”. As with the Archive Widget, it also won't tend to be a good conductor of content. It's much more efficient to add some context in the form of a category, tag, or title.
Categories Widget
Many blogs / sites organize content by category so that visitors can narrow down what they want to read to what is most relevant to them. Categories can be displayed in a widget area, or in a menu.
The "Custom Taxonomies Menu Widget" plugin allows you to drill down into categories with custom taxonomies.
Custom Menu Widget
The custom menu widget allows you to dynamically display a specific menu in a widget area. Menus can be changed from " Appearance> Menus WordPress dashboard, and changes will automatically be reflected on an asset menu in the widget. From the customer's point of view, this makes it possible to change specific elements on a website, without messing up the widget zone design.
Meta Widget
It is difficult to think of a situation where Meta Widget Would be appropriate for a customer-facing website. While it was probably designed with lofty intentions for the early versions of WordPress, seeing this on a website now looks a bit cheesy. For the most part, this widget includes login links and other admin links.
But thanks to the WP admin page, and the dashboard, why would anyone need to use this widget in the on their site?
Widget Page
The Pages Widget allows you to display titles and links to pages by title, order or ID. In a way, it's like a custom menu that groups all the pages together. It is important to note that you can exclude pages from this menu by their ID.
Recent Comments Widget
The Recent Comments Widget allows you to view the most recent comments on your blog. This widget should probably be used if you get a consistent volume of comments, in order to encourage new visitors to view blog posts, and leave comments.
Widget RSS
The RSS Widget is used to display the content of another RSS feed. You can give the widget a title, set the number of RSS items to display, and whether you want to display content, author data, or date information.
If your site has a blog, it's probably not a good idea to direct traffic elsewhere. But the RSS Widget could be a good fit for a site that doesn't have a blog, and wants to align with another source of content in the same niche.
Search Widget
If your site has a lot of content, the Search widget can help visitors find specific things they are looking for. Its functionality is pretty basic and a good start with a simple site
Cloud Tag Widget
The "Tag Cloud" widget allows you to display a cloud of tags or categories. Much like the categories widget, it allows visitors to navigate through content and discover. Although many WordPress sites have made use of this widget in the past, a more modern approach to content discovery / navigation is by using the categories or side content widget.
Widget text
The Text Widget is the most versatile of all WordPress widgets. It allows you to add arbitrary HTML or CSS code to a widget area widget.
Widget recent articles
WordPress is equipped with a basic widget with recent articles which can be replaced by the plugin "Recent Posts Widget Extended ". The basic functionality allows you to designate a title for the section, designate the number of items to display, and display or not the date of publication. It is most often on the sidebars or the footer section.
Recent Posts Widget Extended is a developer's dream, supporting custom CSS, an option for the read link, better display of featured image, and more.
That's it for this guide to the default WordPress widgets. If you want to know how to add more widget on your WordPress blog, you can read this tutorial.
