How to Display WordPress Widgets in Columns

Are you trying to display WordPress widgets in columns?

Widgets allow you to display dynamic content blocks in various areas of your website. Typically, they appear in the sidebar, but they can also be shown in other areas in multiple columns.

In this article, we’ll show easy ways to display WordPress widgets in columns.

Method 1. Display WordPress Widgets in Footer Sidebar

Many WordPress themes come with a dedicated widget-ready area in the footer of your website.

You can check if your theme has a footer widget area by simply going to Appearance » Widgets page. Scroll down a little or click on the Sidebar title to collapse / expand a widget area.

If your theme has a footer widget area, then it will be named appropriately to reflect that.

For instance, in the screenshot above we are using a theme that has three widget areas in the footer. It each widget area will be displayed as a separate column.

You can simply expand a widget area and start adding dynamic widgets that you want to display there.

Once you are finished adding widgets, don’t forget to click on the Update button to save your changes.

You can now visit your website and scroll down to the bottom to see widgets in columns.

Method 2. Display WordPress Widgets in Columns inside Posts and Pages

For this method, we will be using the default WordPress block editor to create columns and then add widgets to them.

This method allows you to display widgets inside content area of posts and pages. The downside is that you’ll have to add it to every post or page where you want to display widgets in columns.

Simply edit a post or page where you want to add widgets in columns. On the post edit screen, you need to add the columns block to your content area and then choose the number of columns you want to display.

Now you can go ahead and click on the add block button in your first column.

From the block select panel, you can scroll down to Widgets section and add any legacy widget to a column.

You can also add any other block that you want to add which gives you a lot of flexibility. Plus since its the block editor, you can choose background and text color inside the editor.

Once you are satisfied, don’t forget to update or publish your post or page,. You can now preview it to see how it looks on your website.

Method 3. Adding Widgets in Columns using SeedProd

For this method, we’ll be using SeedProd which is the best WordPress page builder plugin on the market.

SeedProd makes it super easy to create custom landing pages for your website. You can also use it to create completely custom WordPress themes using a drag & drop interface (no coding needed).

First, you need to install and activate the SeedProd plugin. For more details, see our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.

Note: You’ll need at least PRO plan to unlock theme builder feature.

Upon activation, you need to enter your plugin license key. You can find this information under your account on the plugin website.

Next, head over to the SeedProd » Theme Builder page and click on the Themes button at the top.

This will bring up several ready made SeedProd themes that you can use as a starting point. You can also choose to start from scratch if you want.

Once you choose a theme, SeedProd will automatically generate templates for different areas of your website.

Simply click on a template to start editing it. For instance, if you wanted to display widget columns in the footer area, then you would edit the Footer template.

This will launch the SeedProd builder interface. It is a drag and drop design tool with a live preview of your website.

Simply add a columns block to your layout and then click on the add button to start adding widgets.

SeedProd comes with all the commonly used WordPress widgets that you may need, plus some more. You can edit widgets, headings, or any custom block inside those columns.

Once you are satisfied with your widget columns, don’t forget to click on the Save button at the top.

You can now continue editing rest of your WordPress theme. For more details, see our complete tutorial on how to create a custom WordPress theme for beginners.

Once you are finished you can go back to SeedProd » Theme Builder page and turn on toggle next to the ‘Enable SeedProd Theme’ option.

You can now visit your website to see your widget columns, and your new custom theme in action.

Method 4. Create Widget Columns in WordPress using Full Site Editing

Recently, WordPress introduced full site editing feature which uses the block editor to edit WordPress themes. It is still in beta phase and not all popular WordPress themes currently support it.

However, if you are using a WordPress theme that supports full site editing then you can use this method to display widget columns in your theme.

First, you need to head over to Appearance » Editor screen to launch the full site editor. Click on the WordPress logo at the top and then choose the template where you want to display the widget columns.

For the sake of this tutorial, we’ll be adding widget columns to the footer area of our demo website.

This will open the template inside the editor. The editor is built just like the block editor that you use to write post and pages.

Simply add a columns block to the area where you want to display widgets and choose the number of columns.

After that go ahead and click on the add block button in each column to add widgets that you want to display here.

Once you are satisfied with your changes, you can go ahead and update your theme. Your changes will immediately start appearing on your website.

We hope this article helped you learn how to display WordPress widgets in columns. You may also want to see our guide o the most useful WordPress widgets for your site, or see our WordPress SEO guide to get more free traffic to your website.

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.