Sidebars and footers are called ‘widget areas’ – editable areas that are not part of the main page content.
- For the default Dhyana theme, there is only one area – in the footer
- For most of our other themes, there is a sidebar area and 4 footer areas.
How to edit sidebars and footers
There are 2 ways to change widgets.
1. Use the Customiser This is probably the most intuitive way.
- From the front page, select Customize from the top bar
- For some of our older themes, you might need to hover over the site name in the top bar and then select Theme Customizer in the dropdown menu.
- This brings you to the Customize page. On the left hand side, you can then click on ‘Footer’ (Dhyana theme) or ‘Widgets’ (other themes) to add widgets or edit existing ones.
2. The Widget page. This is the older way that has been around for years.
- From the Dashboard, go to Appearance » Widgets.
- The left side has a box called ‘Available Widgets’ which contains all the widgets you can use. The most important widget is the ‘Text’ widget.
- The right hand side contains the different areas where you can put ‘widgets’ . You assign them by simply dragging the widget to the area. If you are creating the widget for the first time, you will need to enter text or options and then press ‘Save’.
- If you want to remove a widget from the sidebar, but still keep it for future use, you should move it to the inactive widgets section at the bottom of the screen.
- For more information, this is a very good tutorial…
Types of widgets
The text widget
When you add this widget to an area, it will open up to reveal a box where you can add text and a simple text editor. Once you’re done, press save.
Other widgets
Most of the other widgets are not particularly useful. Here are a few exceptions:
- Recent posts – you can specify your most recent articles, as either a list or dropdown
- Recent posts extended allows you to add pictures and teaser text to the list of recent articles. You can also limit posts by category. There are quite a few settings here, we have added some sensible defaults but feel free to change
- Random quote – you can add quotes using the Quotes Collection section on the sidebar, and then this widget will display them. They will automatically reload when you press next quote.
- Language switcher – if you have enabled multiple languages, you might want to have the language switcher on the sidebar instead of the top menu
- Search – the Dhyana theme does not come with a top search icon, so you might feel the need of adding a search box in the footer
Fixed widgets
(This only applies to themes with sidebar widgets – so not the default Dhyana theme) For each widget, you can check ‘Fixed widget‘ if you want the widget to be always visible in the sidebar (this can be useful, for example, to ensure there is always a nice article available to read once the visitor is finished reading that particular article)