While it is simple to use the build in widgets in WordPress and themes to add simple text, categories, tags etc. to sidebars there is so much more you can use it for. With the right plugins the WordPress widget system turns into a powerful and highly useful content area. Typical stuff webmasters want to do is to add more sidebars and control what to include on different pages and posts. This is all possible by diving into the code and editing the “<sidebars>.php” file, but it is not what most people want to do. With a widget management plugin taking control is simple and easy and no coding is required.

There are also some pretty useful WordPress widget plugins that enhance the features of the build in widgets. This can be for adding styled and filtered category post lists with images, WYSIWYG text with revision control etc. You see the build in widgets are often too simple when it comes to real website development. Lets have a look at some of the really cool WordPress widget plugins you can use to take full advantage of the WordPress widget system! As you may know by now, WordPress is extremely extensible and you can find plugins for more adding or less  any type of functionality. I found a good plugin resource at WPBriefly you may want to check out.

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.

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.

MORE INFO – by WordPress (free plugin)

Sidebar & Widget Manager for WordPress

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.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Addax – About Me Widget

If you need to add information about yourself on a site Addax makes that easy. Addax is the WordPress Widget in a Metro Style. Using it you can add your Avatar,Name,Text about yourself and links to social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

User Profile Widget for WordPress – About Me

About Me is a plugin for WordPress that creates a new widget to display your user profile and latest tweets. Let your visitors and users know who is behind your site or give a quick explanation about what your site is and what it can do for your users. Use it as an author box to show your credentials and connections to the world. Check the last widget at the right sidebar in the site pointed by the Live Preview link.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

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.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Add Link to Facebook

Automatically add links to posts or pages that are being published to your Facebook wall, pages or groups. Simple one time setup and forget. The way links appear on Facebook can be customized.

MORE INFO – by WordPress (free plugin)

Google Map Widget

Displays a single-image super-fast loading Google map in a widget. A larger map with all the usual features is available on click in a lightbox.

MORE INFO – by WordPress (free plugin)

Grouping Widget

This plugin gives you a total control for your widget layouts using the inactive sidebar widget. Every widget can be edited, added or deleted from the inactive sidebar. You can group widgets in tabs mode, toggles or accordions. Supports multi-instances and you can use as many grouping as you want. Arranging widget position becomes very easy with the jQuery UI drag drop system.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Hello Tabs WordPress Widget

“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!

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Fancy Text WordPress Widget

Using notes is quite popular in modern web design to catch the visitors attention. This WordPress widget plugin makes it easier than ever to add them.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Advanced Text Widget Pro

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

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Vertical scroll recent comments

Vertical scroll recent comments wordpress plugin will scroll the recent post comment vertically (bottom to top) in the widget.

MORE INFO – by WordPress (free plugin)

Navigation Menu Widget

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()

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Advanced Categories WordPress Widget

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.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Display Widgets

Change your sidebar content with different pages. Avoid creating multiple sidebars and duplicating widgets by adding check boxes to each widget in the admin (as long as it is written in the WordPress version 2.8 format) which will either show or hide the widgets on every site page. Great for avoiding extra coding and keeping your sidebars clean.

MORE INFO – by WordPress (free plugin)

Custom Post Widget

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.

MORE INFO – by vanderwijk (free plugin)

Simple Page Sidebars

Designed for simplicity and flexibility, Simple Page Sidebars gives WordPress users, designers, and developers the ability to assign custom sidebars to individual pages–without making any template changes. Existing sidebars can also be assigned in quick edit and bulk edit modes, helping save you time.

MORE INFO – by WordPress (free plugin)

Better Recent Posts Pro

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.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

WP Category Post List Widget

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.

MORE INFO / DOCUMENTATION – by swashata (free plugin)

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.

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Shortcode Exec PHP Administration

This plugin lets you execute arbitrary, reusable PHP code in posts, pages, comments, widgets and RSS feeds using shortcodes. This is pretty cool and a good way to add custom scripts to your site, compared to editing the theme files.

MORE INFO – by Marcel Bokhorst (free plugin)

HTML Javascript Adder

HTML Javascript Adder allows to insert HTML, javascripts, shortcodes, advertisements, flash embed codes, plain text etc in the sidebar via widgets with advanced targeting on posts and pages.

MORE INFO / DOCUMENTATION – by Aakash Chakravarthy (free plugin)

Advanced Post List

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.

MORE INFO – by jokerbr313 (free plugin)

Rich Contact Widget

This contact widget comes with enhanced markup for microdatas & microformats, so that search engines can use it in their search results. They can help display contact informations about your business or yourself below your website in search results, and even a map with your location.

MORE INFO – by WordPress (free plugin)

5Sec Content Scroller

This plugin allows you to add a scroller effect to content from your site, twitter / RSS feeds, custom text. See the demo!

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Testimonials Widget

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.

MORE INFO – by SriniG (free plugin)

Extended Tags WordPress Widget

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

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

WP – RecentComments Options

Show the recent comments in your WordPress sidebar. You can limit the number of comments, set the maximum length of excerpts, filter out pingbacks/trackbacks. You can also enable or disable the avatars, resize and reposition them. Besides above, it supports WordPress Widget

MORE INFO – by mg12 (free plugin)

Ninety Ajax Login / Register Widget

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

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

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

MORE INFO / DEMO – by CodeCanyon (premium plugin)

Author Avatar List

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.

MORE INFO – by bforchhammer + pbearne (free plugin)