There are hundreds of widgets available for WordPress.
But for the purposes of this tutorial there are three widgets that are very important.
- Text widgets
- Genesis Featured Post or Page widget
- The Genesis eNews Extended widget
This is when you should use each one…
Text widgets
Use this when you want to display some simple content that you can easily type into a text widget. You can also use the WordPress post editor to format content with basic HTML. Then click the text tab so you can copy the HTML code and paste it into a text widget. I often use the WordPress post editor to format text, add lists and add images to my code. Then just copy and paste that code into a text widget. This saves me all of the hassle of writing HTML by hand.
Genesis Featured Post or Page widgets
The featured post and featured page widgets are really useful. You first drag a featured post widget into a widget area. Then choose the elements you would like to display. For instance you might want to display the featured image, post title and 200 characters of content.
Genesis eNews Extended widget
This is a great way to display your newsletter sign up form. You just need a small code snippet that you obtain from your mailing list provider, such as MailChimp. You can change the title, teaser text and button text in your newsletter sign up form.