How to create a wordpress custom widget?

by Jyothi K | Jul 24, 2020 | Wordpress

What Are WordPress Widgets?

WordPress widgets build it simple for you to add extra functions to your website through a very simple drag-and-drop interface.

As shown in the below image, WordPress includes a few basic widgets by default.

Also, WordPress allows you to create your own custom widgets with an advanced level of access that doesn’t come with default widgets. To create a custom widget for your WordPress dashboard, follow these simple steps

Creating Custom widget

In WordPress, You can create a custom widget using the WP Widget class. In that, we will use minimum 4 functions to create a custom widget.

1. __construct(): This function provides the basic widget information.

2. widget(): This function contains the widget output.

3. form(): This function defines the widget settings displayed in the WordPress dashboard.

4. update(): This function updates the widget settings in the database.

You can create a custom widget by adding the following code to the functions.php file.

In the above code, we have defined a new function called new_custom_widget(). It registers our widget using the widget ID, which is specified in the __construct() function.

Next, we have tied this function to widgets_init, which loads the widget by using WordPress’s add_action() method.

Now you can use the newly-installed widget.

Go to the Appearance menu, and select Widgets. You should see a widget named Custom Widget in the Available Widgets list.
Next, drag the widget and drop it in the Footer section on the right side of the page as shown below.