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The role of widgets
The official documentation of WordPress refers to widgets as a component that adds content and features to your sidebar. From a typical blogging or CMS user's perspective, it's a completely valid statement. Actually, the widgets offer more in web applications by going beyond the content that populates sidebars. Modern WordPress themes provide a wide range of built-in widgets for advanced functionality, making it much more easier to build applications. The following screenshot shows a typical widgetized sidebar of a website:
![](https://epubservercos.yuewen.com/E09B54/19470408608963406/epubprivate/OEBPS/Images/image_01_002.png?sign=1739416107-s24w7OmkeHkHVIDYoGolF6SYkc5PNYHV-0-1464301a8cce50976a55f8de0ecc4f11)
We can use dynamic widgetized areas to include complex components as widgets, making it easy to add or remove features without changing source code. The following screenshot shows a sample dynamic widgetized area. We can use the same technique for developing applications with WordPress:
![](https://epubservercos.yuewen.com/E09B54/19470408608963406/epubprivate/OEBPS/Images/image_01_003.png?sign=1739416107-b6BhzMUCubGc1WtlMEb7PqOZiaIu757p-0-d2055721a2fbc6301a00e7164ea0e21b)
Throughout these sections, we have covered the main components of WordPress and how they fit into the actual web application development. Now we have a good understanding of the components, we can plan our application developed throughout this book.