The term widget refers to any tool or content that you add, arrange or remove from the sidebar(s) of your site — these are the blocks that make up your sidebar.
To change widgets visit the Appearance > Widgets screen in your dashboard or the widget area in the Customizer.
HOW WIDGETS ARE USED
Widgets are used for a wide range of purposes including:
- Help students, parents and visitors find information on the sites – Search widget, pages widget, category widget, tag cloud widget
- Track visitors to the site. Visitor tracking widgets are used to highlight a site’s global audience. This can be incredibly motivating for students and provides a built-in geography lesson – Flag Counter, Feedjit Live Traffic Feed, ClustrMaps, Revolver Map.
- Student engagement – Quiz widgets, Pet widgets, Wonderopolis.
- Information to help other classes learn more about your class – date widgets, date/time widgets, weather widget.
- Latest news – Twitter widget. Dogo Current Events widget
- Links to helpful resources, student sites and other Class Blogs – Links widget, Pinterest widget
- Help parents, caregivers and other visitors translate your site – Google Translate widget.
- Events Calendar for important dates – Google Calendar
- Book lists – Shelfari bookshelf and Goodread bookshelf
- Email notification of new posts – email subscription widget
- Displaying comments or posts recently posted – recent comments widget, recent posts widget
We’ve set up Widget demo site to showcase the most popular widgets that educators, and students, like to add to their sidebar so you can check out all the widgets in one handy location.https://www.youtube.com/embed/7W9kBiDGBVY
ADD WIDGETS
You add a widget as follows:
1. Go to Appearance > Widgets
2. Click on the triangle on the right side of desired Sidebar to expand (so you can add the widgets).
3. Drag and drop the widget from the Available Widgets into the desired Sidebar.
4. The widget will automatically open — just configure, click Save and then Close.
5. To open and close a widget click the small arrow on the right side of the widget.
CONFIGURE WIDGETS
Each widget has configuration options.
To make changes to a widget click on the triangle on the right side of the widget.
The widget will open.
Each widget has different configuration options. Below is an example of the category widget.
After you’ve configured the widget click Save.
REMOVE WIDGETS
You remove widgets as follows:
1. Go to Appearance > Widgets
2. Click on the small arrow on the right hand side of the widget you want to remove.
3. Click Delete.
This returns the widget to the Inactive Widget area.
WIDGET VISIBILITY
You can easily hide or show widgets on certain pages using the Widget Visibility module in the Jetpack by WordPress.com plugin.
Refer to the Widget Visibility support page for more information.
TROUBLESHOOTING
Why are there widgets on my site that aren’t listed in Appearance > Widgets?
Some themes will display default widgets if you haven’t added any widgets to your sidebar and you won’t see these default widgets list in the sidebar.
Add any widget to the sidebar automatically removes the default widgets replacing them with the new widget. Add an empty text widget if you want to remove the default widgets and don’t want any widgets to show in the sidebar.
A few themes have widgets hard coded into the theme. For example. Pages, Recent Posts, Categories, “What is this Place”, Friends & Links on the theme NotePad Chaos are widgets that have been hard coded in the theme. These widgets can’t be removed. If you don’t like these widgets you need to change to a new theme.
Why are some of my widgets not loading?
If some of your widgets aren’t loading on your front page this normally means that incomplete embed code has been added to a text widget and is stopping the widgets below it from loading.
Here is how to fix the problem:
1. Go to Appearance > Widget
2. Open up any text widget you’ve added and make sure the embed code you’ve added is the complete code.
3. If unsure remove the text widgets one at a time and view your site.
4. Once you’ve identified the text widget causing problems you just need to replace the embed code with new code.