Classic Widgets

Description

Classic Widgets is an official plugin maintained by the WordPress team that restores the previous (“classic”) WordPress widgets settings screens. It will be supported and maintained to 2024, or as long as is necessary.

Once activated and when using a classic (non-block) theme, this plugin restores the previous widgets settings screens and disables the block editor from managing widgets. There is no other configuration, the classic widgets settings screens are enabled or disabled by either enabling or disabling this plugin.

FAQ

Are there any settings?

No, there are no settings. Once activated, this plugin restores the previous (“classic”) WordPress widgets screen and disables the block editor from managing widgets.

Does this work with full site editing and block themes?

No, as block themes rely on blocks. See Block themes article for more information.

Reviews

August 12, 2024 2 replies
It use to work great and was a much added addition to my installs of plugins, but since Wordpress keeps updating their core, it’s now broken. All my social links (Jetpack) icons no longer show up. I can hover over them and see the links, but the icons are no longer showing up anymore.
August 9, 2024
This is one of the first plugins I install on any WordPress website and I am immensely pleased it exists. The block based widget editor is dreadful to use in comparison, I’ve tried to use it several times over the past couple of years since it was introduced and found it to be unintuitive, prone to errors, and easy to make mistakes with. I’ve tried so many times, I’ve completely given up on it and regardless of any updates, bug fixes, etc, I won’t be using it until it comes to a point where Classic Widgets is deprecated.
July 10, 2024
Classic Widgets gives me a lot more control over the look of the widgets. I design/develop the widgets to look as they need too. Clients don’t need confusing options. I like the simplicity of this UI, and it’s flexibility. I wish this was installed by default. It is part of what made WordPress a so popular.
July 2, 2024 1 reply
I’ve installed lattest version of wordpress(6.5.5). i didn’t find “widgets” tab in Appearance and install “Classic Widgets” to solve the issue. But nothing happened. There is only one plugin on the site -> “Classic Widgets”. Others themes don’t have “widget” tabs as well. Absolutely useless.
Read all 251 reviews

Contributors & Developers

“Classic Widgets” is open source software. The following people have contributed to this plugin.

Contributors

“Classic Widgets” has been translated into 41 locales. Thank you to the translators for their contributions.

Translate “Classic Widgets” into your language.

Interested in development?

Browse the code, check out the SVN repository, or subscribe to the development log by RSS.

Changelog

0.3

Update for 5.9.

0.2

Update filter name.

0.1

Initial release.