Quick Tip: Disabling WordPress Widgets

Widgets are very important and helpful tools to set up and develop your WordPress website. But sometimes we store more tools than we need for the near future. In this case the problem of overwhelming by the widgets can appear. The other situation that involves widgets` disabling can appear when you change your WordPress theme or make some other changes in the website design. Some widgets can no longer work efficiently with the new design set up.

Than you can decide to return to the previous version of design or just the need of some old-and-faithful widget can appear. All this cases need to be dealt with suitable approach. How to maintain WordPress website and admin panel in order and disable the unnecessary widgets? In this article we will desirable 3 of the most simple and efficient ways to deal with this issue.

Using the Common WordPress Interface

The first and the simplest way to disable the needless widgets can be performed by means of the common WordPress interface tools. Visit Appearance menu and find the Widgets tab in it. If you scroll the page down, you will see the Inactive Widgets section. All you need to do is to drag-n-drop the widgets you want to disable to this area.

The method of returning from this archive is also pretty much simple with drag-n-drop technology.

Plugins for Disabling WordPress Widgets

There some specific WordPress plugins which allow you to work with disabling and enabling widgets in more efficient and convenient way. These plugins usually provide additional option for bulk actions on widgets. Also these tools allow a WordPress admin to completely vanish the unnecessary widgets, not only to through them to archive or hide from sight.

The example of such a tool is WP Widgets Disable. Once you have downloaded and install this plugin, you will find the additional tab called Disable Widgets inside the Appearance menu. Here you see the checklist of all widgets divided into two categories (tabs) Sidebar and Dashboard. You need only to mark the unnecessary widgets and save changes.

Widget Options is another example of useful WordPress plugin for dealing with needless widgets. This plugin`s category (called Widgets Options) will be available on Settings menu.

Widget Options plugin provides additional opportunities to hide specific widgets on certain devices (smartphones, tablets, PCs) or certain pages of your WordPress website. There is also an option to hide any widget completely. Thus Widget Options plugin is more flexible and provides some interesting features to display widgets only on certain pages of your WordPress website or blog.

Using PHP Files Configuration to Disable Widgets

There is also the way to deal with unnecessary widgets for experienced WordPress developers or those administrators who want to evolve their skills deeper. This method involves the changes in functions.php file of your WordPress website. Since you will make some changes in the core of your website, it is strongly recommended to make child theme first of all (or to backup files).

Than you should familiarize yourself with the WordPress codex page devoted to plugin IDs. This information is needed for the interaction with certain widgets inside the code.

For example, we want to disable the Tag Cloud widget (as it is often unnecessary for most of the modern websites). The following code should be inserted to the function.php file and saved on server:

function unregister_default_wp_widgets() {
 
     unregister_widget('WP_Widget_Tag_Cloud');
}
 
add_action('widgets_init', 'unregister_default_wp_widgets' );

You can disable a lot of widgets simultaneously. For this purpose you should not use the provided coded for each widget separately. The more efficient way is to insert widgets` IDs inside the function (each as a new string with semicolon at the end). After this code starts to work you would not see the listed widgets on your WordPress admin dashboard.

If you decide to revive some of the disabled widgets, then you just delete the corresponding strings on the code of functions.php file (and do not forget to renew file on the server).