WordPress Widgets
Widgets are plugins that can add features to your blog such as Search capabilities, a link to the Archives, a list of Categories, Recent Posts, and more. Plugins are visible to the general public and usually show up on the sidebar, or above or below the content. You can see on this screenshot that the Widgets are “Search” and “Subscribe”. There are a couple more that are off the screenshot.
You can take a look at the second screenshot, which shows the configuration I used to display the widgets seen in the first screenshot.
To change the widgets on your blog, from the WordPress Dashboard, go to Appearance – Widgets. Once there, you’ll see the Widget Areas your blog has and can drag and drop widgets to each area. The default theme has 5 widget areas. The Main Sidebar is the area to the right of the content, and there are 3 across the bottom. In my blog layout, I’ve only configured 1 widget area, and that is a sidebar.
The widgets that I would suggest having are Search, Subscribe, and About. Those are the most important things that people will be looking for, so make it easy for them to find those items. Beyond those things, you may want to have a link to the twitter feed and facebook page or other social media links.
Starting Your Own Blog Resources:
Here are a few pages of how to start your own blog. I originally had this in 3 parts, but decided it would be better broken down to more specific steps. I’ve also added a few other resources pages, such as camera and lighting pages, as well as general technology pages. These pages are most of the general steps in starting your own blog.
| WordPress Pages | ||
|---|---|---|
| WP Part 1 – Domain Names | WP Part 2 – Hosting | WP Part 3 – WordPress (installation) |
| WP Part 4 – Configure WP | WP Part 5 – Themes | WP Part 6 – Plugins |
| WP Part 7 – Widgets | WP Part 8 – Pages and Menus | WP Part 9 – Posts and Categories |
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