Pictorial Guide to Popular WordPress Sidebar Widgets

Pictorial Guide to Popular WordPress Sidebar Widgets

April 18th, 2010

I thought I’d provide a pictorial list of the most popular and common WordPress widgets. This chart can be used in the following ways:

• Non-Designers and WordPress Newbies – Because you, or the designer you’ve hired have gotta put something in your sidebar, this guide will remove all of the guesswork from the process and give you a visual image of what each widget will actually contain and how it will add to your site’s functionality.
• Web Designers Working with a Client – You may have already accounted for the sidebar content in your design mockup, but in case you’d like to give your client the opportunity to decide which widgets they’d like to use based on their particular goals for the site, a guide like this can save you hours of email and telephone back-and-forth explaining and finally finalizing this absolutely crucial part of the design and development process.

Of course, this list represents just a teeny-tiny micro-fraction of the possibilities for WordPress sidebar widgets, as the total number of available WordPress plugins goes well into the thousands. This is simply meant to be a basic starting point.

For the newbies out there:

• Keep in mind that the images of the widgets below are taken from one particular website, and these widgets will not look exactly like this on your site. Instead, they will be styled to fit your particular site’s design.
• You can make the title of your widgets whatever you’d like. If you’re working with a designer, make sure to let them know what you’d like each widget to be titled.

ID #	Name	Notes	Image
PA01	Pages	Displays a list of the pages on your website. Usually unnecessary if you have a navigation bar at the top of your site with all of the pages already listed. Built into WordPress
LI01	Links	Displays a list of links to other websites that you’d like to promote or share on your site. If you’re working with a web designer and you’d like to use this sidebar, make sure you include the links you’d like to use when you request this widget. Built into WordPress
TE01	Text	This is a just simple text widget that allows you to display any text you’d like to include. Built into WordPress
TE02	Text (with image)	This is the exact same widget as TE01, but I’m simply showing you another way to use it. In this case, we can place an advertising banner in the widget. You could even have BOTH an ad AND text in this widget. Built into WordPress
SE01	Search	This widget allows users to search your website. Built into WordPress
NL01	Newsletter Signup	This widget only comes into play if you are sending out an email newsletter Usually this is done using an outside email marketing service such as Constant Contact, MailChimp, or iContact to name just a few of the myriad of companies offering this service. This signup form is created using code provided by your email marketing service which is simply pasted into a standard WordPress text widget (TE01) Built into WordPress
FP01	Featured Page	This widget allows you to take an excerpt from an existing page on your website and feature it in the sidebar. Since you’re only displaying an excerpt of the page’s content here, the widget will provide a link for your website visitors to go to the page that’s being featured. You can also specify a small thumbnail image to go inside the widget, but this is optional. Web-designers and do-it-yourselfers: Download plugin here.
SM01	Find Me On	This widget allows you to display your various social media profiles on your WordPress site to offer visitors to your site another way to connect with you online. You can use this to link to every major social network, and then some (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc etc etc) You can also use this as an RSS link to allow people to subscribe to you blog. Web-designers and do-it-yourselfers: Download plugin here.
SM02	Social Media Page	This widget is very similar to “Find Me On” (SM01), but also give you the option of including the name of each social network. Doesn’t allow you to change the order of your social media profile listings, and also does not allow you to include an RSS link. Web-designers and do-it-yourselfers: Download plugin here.
TW01	Twitter for WordPress	If you’re a Twitter users, this widgets automatically displays your most recent WordPress tweets You can specify how many of your most recent tweets you’d like to display. Web-designers and do-it-yourselfers: Download plugin here.
PH01	FlickrRSS	If you have an account with the photo sharing site, Flickr, this widget allows you to display your most recently added images. You can decide how many images you’d like to display here Web-designers and do-it-yourselfers: Download plugin here.
RP01	Recent Posts	This widget only comes into play if your website is going to be including a blog. This simply lists the most recent blog posts You can select how many of your recent posts you’d like to display here Built into WordPress
RC01	Recent Comments	This widget only comes into play if your website is going to be including a blog. This lists names of your most recent commenters and the name of the blog post that they commented on You can select how many of recent comments you’d like to display here Built into WordPress
RC02	Get Recent Comments	This widget only comes into play if your website is going to be including a blog. This lists names of your most recent commenters and an excerpt of the comment that they left You can select how many of recent comments you’d like to display here Web-designers and do-it-yourselfers: Download plugin here.
BC01	Categories	This widget only comes into play if your website is going to be including a blog. This lists names of all of the categories for your blog posts Built into WordPress
SU01	Subscribe Here	This widget only comes into play if your website is going to be including a blog. This widget allows your website visitors to subscribe to your blog via RSS This also allows website visitors to enter their email address and have blog posts automatically emailed to them as soon as their published. Web-designers and do-it-yourselfers: Download plugin here.

If you feel that I’ve left out any basic widgets that a high percentage of WordPress users would need on their site, please leave a comment and if I happen to agree with ya, I’ll add it to the chart!

Category : Blog & Cool Tools & WordPress