WordPress widget plugins are heavily used in WordPress websites.

Like shortcode plugins they are used to add features and content in a flexible way without any need for coding. Most blog themes for WordPress have fixed widget locations and features for adding lists of posts and categories in the sidebar. While this is OK in most cases more power is sometimes required to build a unique and eye catching website.

Just ask yourself, have you ever wanted to show different widgets on specific pages or posts or even inside your content? Alternatively, have you considered to add tabs to you theme but not sure how to do it? If not the need will come once you realize how powerful the right WordPress widgets can be!

The solution for injecting more flexibility and power into your WordPress website is to use plugins that are specifically designed to help you add and move around widget areas and control what widgets to display and when. Then you need to find some cool widget plugins to add the feature and content you need.

I have collected a bunch of the best WordPress widget plugins I know. I am fully aware that there is a lot more out there and I may have missed a few good ones. Please let me know if I did and I will consider adding them.

Disclosure: Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links and I will earn a commission if you purchase through those links (at no extra cost to you). I recommend that you do your own independent research before purchasing any product or service. This article is not a guideline, a recommendation or endorsement of specific products.

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WordPress Widget and Sidebar Managers

Custom WordPress Sidebar Plugin – MORE INFO

custom-wordpress-sidebar-plugin

With Custom WordPress Sidebar Plugin you can replace any sidebar and widget area in your theme without diving into the code. You can even replace multiple sidebars on the same page.

Sidebar & Widget Manager for WordPress – MORE INFO

This WordPress widget plugin not only allow you to control what widget will be shown on what pages, posts, categories

This WordPress widget plugin not only allow you to control what widget will be shown on what pages, posts, categories it also have a shortcode system that allows you to build up unique page layouts using widgets. Check out the videos and see for yourself how cool this plugins is.

Widgets Controller – MORE INFO

widget-controller-example

Widgets Controller is a free plugin and it offers an easy way to control where the widgets are displayed on your website. When adding a new widget you can simply select where it is going to be visible.

WordPress Widget Ninja – MORE INFO

Widget-Ninja

Widget Ninja is used to control widget visibility based on conditional tags. It eliminates the need for multiple sidebars because you can configure each widget to ie. be visible only on the front page or only in certain categories. With 23 conditional tags (8 can take additional parameters such as post or category ID’s) and 3 logical statements (or, and, not) you can configure a widget to (not) show upon literally any page! It doesn’t matter if it’s a single page, archive, search page or 404 – there’s a conditional tag for everything!

Custom WordPress Widget Areas – MORE INFO

custom-widget-areas-for-wordpress

The plugin lets you create an unlimited number of Sidebars (Custom Widget Areas), easily lets you configure them by adding widgets, and then place them directly inside the content of Pages and Posts by simply using Shortcodes. We have also added support for Custom Post Types and Custom Taxonomies. It recognizes your themes default sidebars and allows you to replace them, as well as allowing you to set individual sidebars for each Page, Post and Category.

Improved Text Widgets for WordPress

Advanced Text Widget Pro – MORE INFO

This plugin provides flexible widget visibility conditions for every widget on your site, including core and third party widgets provided by other plugins.

Black Studio TinyMCE Widget – MORE INFO

black-studio-tinymce-widget

This plugin adds a WYSIWYG text widget based on the standard TinyMCE WordPress visual editor. This is intended to overcome the limitations of the default WordPress text widget, so that you can visually add rich text contents to your sidebars, with no knowledge of HTML required.

Custom Post Widget – MORE INFO

The Custom Post Widget allows you to display the contents of a specific custom post in a widget. This allows you to use the WordPress WYSIWYG editor for preparing text for a widget area. It is pretty cool as the out of the box text widget is not very easy to use if you want to add images, links etc.

Testimonials Widget – MORE INFO

Testimonial widget plugin allows you display testimonials in a widget on your WordPress blog. More than one widget can be displayed, each pulling from testimonial sets by using tags. Each displayed widget has its own identifier allowing for custom CSS styling.

Navigation Widgets

Navigation Menu Widget – MORE INFO

This is an advance widget that gives you total control over the output of your menus. Support multiwidget, resizeable page featured image, easy to customize and full features. Displays a list of menu as links. This widget is based on the WordPress function: wp_nav_menu()

Social Media Widgets

My Social Counter for WordPress – MORE INFO

my-social-counter-for-wordpress

With this widget plugin for WordPress you can add cool social media counters to your sidebars.

Widgets for Post, Category and Tag listings

Advanced Categories WordPress Widget – MORE INFO

image

Advanced Categories Widget is an advance widget that gives you total control over the output of your categories. Support multiwidget, category image, easy to customize and full features. Displays a list of Categories as links. When a Category link is clicked, all the posts in that Category will display on a Category Page using the appropriate Category Template dictated by the Template Hierarchy rules.

Hello Tabs WordPress Widget – MORE INFO

“Hello tabs” is a wordpress plugin, which can be used for creating tabs element from any widgets you have! Plugin comes with 12 predefined styles and 24 animation effects! You can even create few tabs elements on a page!

WP Category Post List Widget – MORE INFO

wp-category-posts-list

This is one of my personal favorites and I use it on several sites to show various lists of posts. It has build in support for CSS templates and it makes it really powerful on websites where you use it in different spots and use cases.

Better Recent Posts Pro MORE INFO

Better Recent Posts Widget Pro provides a greatly enhanced recent posts widget. The default recent posts widget that comes with WordPress offers almost zero control over which posts are displayed, or how they are displayed.

Tag Master WordPress Plugin – MORE INFO

tag-master-wordpress-plugin

WordPress Categories and tags widget are very basic. People may not even notice those two widgets because of its familiar and dull nature. Tag Master WordPress plugin allows you to give a new look and feel for categories and tag widget.

Advanced Link Widget – MORE INFO

An advance widget that gives you great control over the output of your links.

Tabs Widget For WordPress – MORE INFO

Tabs Widget for WordPress

This plugin creates a new WordPress widget to display a tabbed panel with different content types on your site. Tabs can rotate one after the other thus allowing for more exposure of the content: your posts are no longer hidden.

Advanced Post List – MORE INFO

Highly customizable plugin for designing a large variety of post lists to be shown using shortcodes e.g. in a widget. It will allow you to create lists with your own design for displaying Recent Posts, Popular Posts, Related Posts, Future Posts, etc. Including Custom Post Type & Taxonomy support.

Extended Tags WordPress Widget – MORE INFO

image

An advanced widget that gives you total control over the output of your tags. The Tags widget replaces the default WordPress Tag Cloud widget. This version gives total control over the output to the user by allowing the input of all the arguments typically seen in the wp_tag_cloud() function

User Profile and Author Information Widget

Ninety Ajax Login / Register Widget – MORE INFO / DEMO

Ninety Ajax Login/Register for WordPress

Sidebar Login/Register plugin for WordPress does exactly what it says on the tin; Logins and Registrations with a touch of AJAX magic. Simple!

Sidebar Login/Register plugin for WordPress

It also has a nice ‘logged in’ view, and a lost password form for those forgetful folk.

It also has a nice ‘logged in’

Its simple to get started – in most cases just activate the plugin, add the widget to your sidebar and go!

Authors Widget – MORE INFO

image

This widget show your site authors with details description and avatar. Widget can be used multiple of times even in one sidebar area.

Author Avatar List – MORE INFO

With this plugin it is now easy to display lists of user avatars on your blog. It also allows to insert single avatars for blog users or any email address into a post or page.

[exec]echo get_avatar( get_the_author_email(), ’80’ );[/exec]

Author : Lars Vraa

[exec]the_author_description();[/exec]

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