I just produced video #3 in the WordPress Widgets series.

This one is an overview of the widget page.

It goes over the standard widgets that you get by default and gives a quick run down of what they are and how you can use them.

Take a look at the video to learn the basics of the world of widgets in WordPress.

If you find the information helpful, don’t forget to “like”,”tweet” or “google +1 the video. Many Thanks as always.

Want to read the transcript of this video. Go to the full version of the post.

Hey, Claude Pelanne here, Affiliates Starting Line. Welcome. This is going

to be part two of the Widget series, and in this particular case I’m going

to show you different widgets that are basically always there. Then there

are going to be other custom widgets that appear depending on the plug-ins

you’re using and the theme you’re using. This is a typical widgets page in

a WordPress website. The first thing you see here is a kismet. A kismet is

a spam catching piece of software. It comes in automatically when you load

up WordPress. Again, I use it, a lot of people use it. In order to use it,

before you use it, you have to get a key, a piece of code that a kismet

gives you when you sign up for them. Now, if you’ve been with a kismet long

enough, you have that code. It used to be free. Today I think if you sign

up for a kismet, there’s a monthly charge. That’s what a kismet is.

 

Custom menu is just what it is. You can go back into your menu screen and

create custom menus for your website. Again, that depends on the theme

you’re using and when you do that, this is the widget that you’ll use if

you want to put that custom menu into a sidebar. Recent posts, you’re going

to get that on all the sites you get. If you add that it will load into the

sidebar. Your most recent posts, you can select which sidebar you want it

in, depending on the theme you’re using. Here you can select a number of

posts that you want to have appearing in your recent posts widget. In this

case, the default is at five.

These thesis widgets are all specific to this theme that happens to be on

this website. Archives, if you’re archiving and you’ve got a lot of stuff,

and your site is old you might want to put an archive in your sidebar. This

allows you to do that.

 

Links are also very important. If you want to set up a blog role that has

links to other websites that you think are important, and that you have

relationships with. This is where you will add the widget for the links.

You’ll actually create the links over here under the links tab, and that

would be subject for another video.

 

RSS, real simple syndication. This allows you to load in an RSS feed, a

real simple syndication feed, that allows people to subscribe to you. So

that when you add content to your website, they get automatically notified

and they can link to it, and never even have to visit your website after

that. They just click the content and it will show up in their RSS reader,

and that’s subject for another video.

Calendar, this just allows you to add a calendar. Meta allows you to put

the admin, the feed, and where it’s certain ways to get into your site,

onto your sidebar. Frankly, I never use this one. I prefer to log in the

old fashioned way, and I don’t like the idea of having meta information

sitting on the sidebar. You won’t find this meta widget used very often.

 

Search allows you to put the search box into your sidebar so other people

looking for specific information on your website can just type in the

information.

Categories, you can put a category widget. It will lay out all the

categories on your sidebar if you want to do that. If you’re not organizing

your nav bar at the top of your website by category, then maybe this will

come in handy. Pages, this one I do use. It allows you to put pages in the

sidebar, especially my disclaimer disclosure. If I want people to be able

to find them more recently, I’ll put them in a sidebar, not in a footer.

 

Recent comments, a lot of people use this. It show if the site is current

and up and running. That can go into your sidebar. Tag cloud are when you

tag posts. As you enter them, you should be tagging your posts. This will

create a list of all the tags you have on your website. So if somebody

clicks on a tag, which is another fancy word for keyword, they will go to

the article that’s related to that tag. Or, they will go to a series of

articles related to that tag, if that’s the case. It’s a very useful tool

that can come in handy. That’s something for another video.

 

Down below here, you’re going to see inactive widgets. These are available

widgets. These are the ones that are available that are not being used in

the sidebar. Inactive widgets are widgets that have been used, and

withdrawn from the sidebar. They’re in here, and very often some of them

may have the code still in them.

 

For example, in my RSS feed if I click edit, I can see that my RSS feed is

already here loaded in. This URL is the RSS URL for creating a feed. All I

have to do is select which sidebar I want it in. Let’s say I want it in

sidebar one. I can save the widget. Now my RSS feed, as you see over here,

just appeared. Let’s take a look and see what order I want it. Position

number five. I want it at the top, so let’s put it in position number one

and save it. Now you see my RSS feed has appeared here in position number

one. If I go to visit the site, there it is. There’s the RSS feed right

there, appearing at the top.

 

So there you have it. Available widgets. Inactive widgets. Obviously I’ve

used the tag cloud before, so I have tags in there. Oops, I didn’t want to

do that. Save it, and there we are. That’s how the widgets screen displays,

and what it means. I hope this video has been helpful. This is Claude

Pelanne at Affiliates Starting Line. Stay with it. Stay well, and we’ll

talk soon.