10+ Most Useful WordPress Widgets You Should Try
No matter what kind of website you run, or you plan to start, WordPress as a platform, offers a large collection of useful WordPress widgets for boosting your online presence. These small elements perform specific functions and allow users to add some additional elements to their websites.
With the help of widgets, any user can easily use practical features to provide their website visitors with more dynamic, engaging and interactive user experience. Widgets can be easily dragged and dropped in widget-ready areas – header, footer, sidebar, below content, or any other in the theme. If you don’t know what widgets are available with your WordPress theme, go to the Appearance and find the Widgets section in your dashboard. In a case you need a widget that isn’t packed with your theme, don’t worry, you can add and organize widgets in WordPress whenever you want.
Here is the list of most useful WordPress widgets, we believe, every website needs:
Social icons widget allows you to connect your social network profiles with your website. Thanks to this your visitors can easily get in touch with you on all social media channels. With this widget you can display popular social icons in the widget area of your theme. All you need is to drag the widget in your sidebars and change the settings from the widget form. For this purpose, you can use the shortcode as well.
This amazing widget allows you to choose from 400+ custom icons, packed in 5 original icon sets. You can, also, pick different icon colors which perfectly fit your website’s aesthetics. This widget is especially interesting for all academics since it offers the integration of 38 academia icons.
Features that make Social Icons the best WordPress widget:
- 80+ Sites/Social Networks supported
- 400+ Custom Icons
- 5 Icons Sets
- 38 academia icons for academics
- Drag & Drop Icons
- Color Picker
Instagram is one of the three most popular social networks. With 1 billion monthly active users, this platform is trusted by marketers, brands, influencers and ordinary people worldwide. So why don’t use this trend to give your website visitors an opportunity to follow your Instagram updates, right there on your site? With Instagram feed widget you can display Instagram posts from your Instagram accounts as you please. This widget allows you to organize your Instagram posts in the same feed or in the completely separate fields. Plus, you can choose to display the thumbnail, medium or full-size photos, meaning it’s super easy to customize your Instagram feeds following your branding style. Blend it into your site or grab the visitor’s attention with some vibrant details! The best part is your new Instagram content will be automatically added to your site, which will keep your audience is updated and engaged at any time. Instagram Feed widget is not only simple to set up, but it guarantees your layouts will look great on any screen size or device type. This widget is the perfect choice for everyone who wants to increase engagement with Instagram followers. But, in a case you need some additional options, you can always try Instagram feed plugin.
Features that make Instagram Feed the best WordPress widget:
- Organize posts in the same/separate fields
- Fresh content – automatic updates
- Responsive
- Easy to customize
Every marketer knows how powerful email lists can be. They not only promote your website content, but can turn an ordinary visitor into a customer as well. Mailchimp for WordPress is designed to help you add your WordPress visitors to your email lists. With it you can create beautiful news newsletters that will attract potential subscribers and customers. You can as well add different forms and widgets that make it easier for your website visitors to sign up to your email lists. Additionally, this plugin allows you to track and test each campaign or to use different email templates to enhance your email campaigns. It generates free reports and insightful data, so you can adapt your marketing strategy, based on these facts. Moreover, MailChimp helps you collect subscribers on platforms like Twitter and Facebook. In the end, let’s also mention that Mailchimp for WordPress easily integrates with Contact Form 7, WooCommerce, BuddyPress and Gravity Forms.
Features that make Mailchimp for WordPress the best WordPress widget:
- Easy newsletters creation
- Different email templates
- Truck and test campaigns
- Easy integration with Contact Form 7 and WooCommerce
If you liked what we’ve just written about Mailchimp plugin, you will surely like what comes next. Genesis eNews Extended plugin is a simple way to create a new widget to easily add mailing lists integration to your website. Basically, with it you can add the eNews widget to your widget area and then quickly add mailing lists to a blog or a website. In a case you switch mailing list services, just re-paste the link and continue with your activities.
This widget allows the site administrators to set the Feedburner ID, email form field and hidden fields to mimic the subscribe form of other mailing list services.
Features that make Genesis eNews Extended the best WordPress widget:
- Easy to add mailing lists
- Simple and intuitive options
- Highly practical
Nothing can replace the original, quality website content. But, sometimes, adding external material can supplement your regular content and provide your website visitors with extra value. No matter what kind of quote you want to share, you can easily add it to your website thanks to practical Quotes collection plugin for WordPress. This plugin is made to help you collect, manage and display your favorite quotes in your blog or a website. With it, you can create a library of quotes or add them to a sidebar. The great news is you can do it with no effort, since this plugin comes with a powerful admin interface. This allows you to add, edit, import, and export the selection of your quotes with complete ease. Additionally, Quotes collection plugin gives you the opportunity to display the random quote from your collection in any widget area. And, in the end, let’s also mention that this plugin follows the latest WordPress innovations since it includes Gutenberg blocks that can be added in pages and posts.
Features that make Quotes Collection the best WordPress widget:
- Admin interface
- Sidebar widget:
- Gutenberg blocks
- Includes an easy-to-use admin interface.
- Provides a Random Quote sidebar widget
Pictures play an important role in the digital world. Together with the videos, they make the most powerful type of online content. This is definitely a good reason to display them on your website. Upload the images via Media Library or use the plugin in a case you need advanced options. But, in a case you want to add the images to your sidebars, we have the right widget for you – Simple image widget. With it you can easily display advertisements, create call-to-actions or even create sliders. This can be great for sharing your special offers, promo campaigns or putting the special items into the spotlight.
Although this plugin is very basic, it’s built with extensibility in mind, which means you can easily spin off new image-based widgets, or customize the widget output with available template hierarchy.
Features that make Simple Image the best WordPress widget:
- Ease to use
- Perfect for displaying advertisements
- Ideal for sharing images in a sidebar
- Option for slider creating
With over 2 billion active users worldwide, Facebook is one of the most influential online platforms over there. As the number of Facebook users constantly grows, there is a good strategic opportunity for everyone who wants to boost their website presence. By adding the Facebook page like widget to your website, you can easily display Facebook page likes into your WordPress sidebar. This plugin is one of the most popular plugins for Facebook page feeds, with over 8,65,000 downloads and 1,00,000+ active installs. It allows you to easily display or hide posts from a timeline, or to show your cover or profile photos.
Features that make Facebook page like widget the best WordPress widget:
- Lightweight & easy to configure
- Width options, language selection, custom css.
- Shortcode support
- Fast & helpful support
If you search for a perfect solution for a widget control, Widget options is for you. Packed with a ton of features, this plugin is one of the most complete WordPress widget management plugins for a reason. It allows you to easily display or hide widgets on specific pages via checkbox options. This means you need no coding knowledge to organize your widgets as you wish. Also, you can customize each widget, since this plugin offers many styling options. This is how your visitors will easily notice your most important widgets.
Furthermore, this plugin allows you to show or hide the widgets on given date range or specific days. This is great if you want to run promotions, since you can hide your deals and ads on widgets when the promotion ends. Another great thing about this plugin is the possibility of adding widget animations. They can be shown as user scrolls on the page and widget enters the screen. This plugin also allows you to show or hide the widgets on different screen sizes and device types, which is especially useful for better user targeting.
Features that make Widget options the best WordPress plugin:
- Easily display/hide widgets
- Show/hide widgets on mobile, tablet, desktop devices
- Add animations to widgets
- Hide widgets on specific days
The most popular posts on your blog, definitely deserve a special place on your website. With the help of WordPress popular posts widget, you can display your popular posts in a striking manner. Choose a custom time for your popular posts and display the posts that have been the most read during the last 7 or 30 days. Also, you can create multiple separate lists of your most popular posts. For example, you can display your all-time most popular posts as well as the most popular posts from the last week. On the other hand, you can order your lists by comments, views or the average views per day. Plus, you can include post thumbnail images and excerpts in your list. Great thing is that this widget works with any custom post type.
Features that make WordPress Popular Posts the best WordPress widget:
- Multi-widget
- Time Range
- Custom Post-type support
- Thumbnails
- Statistics dashboard
- Sorting options
Keep your website visitors informed about your latest posts with Recent posts widget with thumbnails. Based on the popular WordPress default widget ‘Recent posts’, this widget allows you to display more information about posts including excerpts and assigned categories. Also, you can display your recent posts’ thumbnails. How? The thumbnails will be generated from the featured image of a post or of the first image in the post content. Also, you can easily set the width and height of the thumbnails. Have in mind that the thumbnails will appear left-aligned to the post titles in left-to-right languages. Which is totally opposite in right-to-left languages.
Features that make the Recent Posts Widget with Thumbnails the best WordPress widget:
- Option for displaying excerpts and categories
- Thumbnails
- Ease usage
Any business niche that relies on events, needs an intuitive event management system. Thanks to My Calendar plugin, anyone can display and customize events on a website. This highly-customizable, feature-rich WordPress tool, allows you to place detailed calendars anywhere on your website. My Calendar supports both individual event calendars and multiple calendars that can include specific categories, locations or lists of upcoming events. Since this plugin comes with versatile customization options, it’s especially a good choice for professionals who need custom calendars on their websites. Apart from this, there is a premium extension that supports more advanced features. With it, you can easily import events from outside sources, sell tickets for your events or add support for user-submitted events.
Features that make the My Calendar the best WordPress widget:
- Supports individual and multiple calendars
- Easy customization
- Tickets selling
- User-submitted events
Contextual Related Posts is a powerful plugin that allows you to create a widget any blogger needs. With this tool, you can display a list of related posts on your website and in your feed. This, furthermore, improves navigation and reading experience. The posts you want to display will include the title and the rest of the content you find relevant (featured image, for example). When you organize posts this way, readers will remain curious and engaged for longer.
Apart from this, Contextual Related Posts supports the widgets functionality, thumbnails, and different custom post types.
Features that make the Contextual Related Posts the best WordPress widget:
- Rich features
- Full customization
- Supports thumbnails and different post types
- Display title and featured image
Conclusion
As you see, with the help of useful WordPress plugins you can basically add any functionality to your website. From Instagram feed to your recent posts, possibilities are endless. After you add WordPress footer, choose header type, and customize your WordPress sidebar, get the plugins that will work the best for your content and website type and prepare to impress your website visitors!
We hope that you found this article to be helpful. If you liked it, please feel free to check out some of these articles as well!
