A little box with certain content or a special function that you can drop into one of the widget areas of your website, such as a sidebar or footer. Some of the most popular widgets do things like automatically listing recent or popular posts, adding a field for your readers to sign up and follow your blog, show a tag cloud, etc.

Widgets are managed from your Dashboard menu under Appearance, Widgets. In self-hosted WordPress, widgets can be added via a plugin or theme. WordPress.com offers a limited selection of widgets, which you can’t add to. Some themes may not support all widgets.