Quick Blogging Guide: Theme Widgets and Sidebars
Most blog theme designs come with widgets that a blogger can use to add custom contents on a blog, notably on the blog’s sidebars. A sidebar is that “narrow” column of a blog, that are either placed on the left side or at the right side.
Depending on the theme’s over-all design, a theme can have a single sidebar and is called a 2-column themes (the layout of this site, Bloggista.net is based on a 2-column theme where the sidebar is placed on the right).
Dual sidebar themes have 3-columns where the sidebars are placed both on the left and right or side-by-side, more popular choice is to place the widgets on the right side (Bloggista.com is an example of a 3-column theme blog).
Some themes could have 4 or more sidebars (check out Shopping.bloggista.com). However, there are also blog themes that do not have widgets, and the layout is already fixed (check out Consulting.bloggista.com to see an example of a blog theme with no widgets).
What are the uses of Widgets?
Widgets are used to add customized content on a blog, in the sidebars. In Wordpress blogs, several widgets are available that make Wordpress a popular blogging platform among bloggers. To use the Widgets, go to YourBlog’s Dashboard > Presentation > Themes | Widgets.
RSS Widgets: Contents can be “feeds” or entries of another blog or site. You can place up to 10 RSS widgets on your blog should you wish.
Text Widgets: These are the most flexible and useful widgets for Wordpress blogs. The Text widgets can be used to place any HTML code of a third-party utility and widgets (like that Entrecard widget you see on top of this blog, or those widgets and elements placed at the bottom right sidebar - Alexa rank, buttons, sitemeter, etc). Text widgets can also be used to display ads, as in Google Ads. There is no limit as to how many codes you can place on a Text Widget, and you can use up to 10 text widgets on your blog.
Category Widgets. These widgets can be used to display your blog posts’ categories on the sidebar. Categories are useful if you wish to group your posts based on relationship and specific topic. Categories are also used in some plug-ins to display all your related Posts. Related posts are determined based on what category you used, and all posts with the same category are then considered ‘related posts’.
Plugin Widgets. Some Plugins also create new widgets that you can use on your blog. All these widgets are found in your Available Widgets section. For more information about Plugins and how they work, check out Quick Blogging Guide: Working with Plugins post.
How to place a Widget in the sidebar?
There is no trick to this as it is just a simple drag and drop process. Select the widget that you want to place on your blog’s sidebar and drag it to the sidebar of your choice. Make sure to configure the widget (if available) by clicking on the “Configure” button found at the bottom-right portion of the Widget. See Screen.
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