Widgets are probably the most awesome thing to come to blogging since… ever.  When you take a look at this site you’ll see to the right hand side some categories.  If you look to the left you’ll see our newsletter optin, our recent posts, our tag cumulus, and our blogroll.  We can add all these in any order or fashion we want, and we can add any other type of column you can think of.  These are out widgets.

Widgets are part of your WordPress blog’s appearance.  Depending on what theme you have there are multiple places you can put your widgets.  Sometimes you will have a theme with 3 different columns, and sometimes you’ll have a theme with only 1.  This is also something to keep in mind when you’re selecting a theme.  Depending on how many widgets you think you will have, you should pick your theme accordingly.

In your WordPress dashboard click on Appearance > Widgets.  You’ll see a screen similar to this:

Widgets Screen

Widgets Screen

As you can see for this example we have two sidebars.  To add new widgets or remove them, simply highlight them and drag them over to where you want them and they will be added to your site.  You can see why WordPress and widgets are such a great feature to have.  They are so easy to manage and do so much work for you it’s rediculous.

Also you can change the order of your widgets simply by moving them up or down in order.  To edit the options of the widget simply click on the down arrow of the widget and it will list the available prompts you need to fill in.

Widgets Options

Widgets Options

That is the basics of what you need to know about widgets!