Widgets, Menus & Background

Widgets are reusable content blocks — a search box, a recent posts list, a text block — that you drag into designated areas like a sidebar or footer, defined by your theme.

Widgets — small content blocks for sidebars and footers

Widgets are reusable content blocks — a search box, a recent posts list, a text block — that you drag into designated areas like a sidebar or footer, defined by your theme.

Manage them at Appearance → Widgets (block themes may fold this into the Site Editor instead). Each widget area is independent — a widget added to the sidebar does not automatically appear in the footer.

Real-life example: Widgets are like magnets on a fridge — small, movable, and placed wherever there is a designated magnetic surface (widget area) on your theme.

Search — a search box widget
Recent Posts — links to your latest content
Custom HTML — for embedding third-party scripts or custom markup
Navigation Menu — displays a menu you built (see below)

Creating and assigning navigation menus

Go to Appearance → Menus, click Create a new menu, name it, and drag Pages, Posts, Categories, or Custom Links into it from the left panel.

Under Menu Settings, assign the menu to a Display location defined by your theme — commonly “Primary Menu” for the header and “Footer Menu” for the footer.

Tip: Drag a menu item slightly to the right underneath another item to nest it as a submenu — most themes render this as a dropdown automatically.

Example simple header menu structure

Primary Menu:
  Home
  About
  Services         <- can have Web Design, SEO as sub-items
  Blog
  Contact

Background image and site identity

Some classic themes support Appearance → Background or Header, letting you set a custom background image or color for the whole site through the Customizer.

Site identity settings — the site title, tagline, and site icon (favicon) — are usually the first thing to configure after activating a new theme, since they appear in browser tabs and search results.

Real-life example: Setting the site title and favicon early is like hanging your shop's signboard before opening day — small, but it is the first thing every visitor notices.