A widget is a small program that gives access to functions that are frequently used, that you particularly need, or that are not programmed in your current theme.
For example, in the navigation bar (sidebar), a widget is used for each part of it: one widget allows you to display your latest entries in chronological order, another widget It counts the pages that your readers visit, another serves to write texts or show images and so on.
Widgets live in your Control Panel (Desktop) → Appearance → Widgets.
As you can see, there are three well-defined areas:
- Available widgets: in this area we will see all the widgets that we have to use.
- Drag Zone(s): These zones are usually the sidebar, footer, etc. They could vary depending on the theme we have activated.
- Inactive Widgets: To this area we can drag those widgets that we have previously used and configured in zone 2 and that for different reasons we wish to deactivate. In this way the widgets will be excluded from zone 2 but all their configuration will remain active, saving us valuable time when using them again.
