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WordPress widgets are independent components that offer particular functionality to your WordPress website. You can add these widgets in sidebars, footers or any widget-ready area of your theme. For example, WordPress Twenty Sixteen theme provides default widgets such as category, archives, recent post, recent comments, calendar, gallery, etc.

Initially, widgets were designed to give an elementary control over the WordPress theme's designing. But now widgets are available on properly widgetized WordPress themes.

If your WordPress theme does not offer the widget you require or any widget at all, you can create a custom widget manually by writing some blocks of code. For the existing widget, you can simply drag and drop wherever you want to show it.

How to add a widget?

WordPress Widget option is available in the WordPress Admin Dashboard Appearance >> Widgets. WordPress widgets can be easily added just by following simple steps given below:

Step 1: Login to your WordPress Admin section and go to Appearance -> Widgets.

Step 2: Choose a widget from the 'Available Widgets' section present on the left side and add it to the available widget-ready section(sidebar, footer, etc) on the right side. There are following two ways to add

• Simply drag the widget to the widget-ready section on the right side.
• When you select a widget, a list of areas where you can add the widget will appear. Check the section where you want to add it and click the "Add Widget" button.

Step 3: After adding the widget to the respective section, when you click on the arrow present in the right corner of the widget, you get options to edit widget settings. For example, if you have selected Recent Posts widget, you will immediately get options to write title and select "number of post". Click on save button to save the customization.

How to remove a widget from a particular section?

Removing widgets is as simple as adding them. Following are the steps:

Step 1: Navigate to Appearance>>Widgets in the WordPress Admin Section.

Step 2: Search for a particular widget and expand it by clicking on the arrow. At the end of the widget settings, you will find "delete" option. Click on it to remove the widget from that section. This will also delete the widget settings.

Note: If you want to remove the widget without losing your settings, just drag that widget to the inactive widget section on the left side. You can always add a widget again from the list of available widgets or inactive widgets.

Widgets are flexible tools in WordPress which developers can make use of in their own creative ways. If you are not comfortable with the code, you can also create you own custom widget and use it.

Widgets can make your website more interactive. They are also highly customizable, and you can achieve practically anything you want through a widget.

We hope this article helped you learn about widgets and how to add and use them in your WordPress websites.