Custom widget area is uses to create a slot for widgets to be placed over them in the admin widgets area. There are a number of widgets that can be placed over these slots such as sidebar widgets for post categories, tag clouds, navigation, search, etc To appear, like in sidebar, in footer, in header, hence where ever their particular slots are defined. Custom widget area provides an easy-to-use drag and drop feature to wordpress users, where user can simply drag widgets from the available widgets to the widget area where they want the widget to be displayed.You can find “Widgets” under the tab “Appearance” in Admin panel: Appearance -> Widgets.
Custom widget area is enabled from function.php that is available in the themes folder.Add the following code in widgets function to add new widget area in the wordpress theme:
register_sidebar( array(
‘name’ => __( ‘Footer Area Three’, ‘twentyeleven’ ),
‘id’ => ‘sidebar-7’,
‘description’ => __( ‘An optional widget area for your site footer’, ‘twentyeleven’ ),
‘before_widget’ => ‘<aside id=”%1$s” class=”widget %2$s”>’,
‘after_widget’ => “</aside>”,
‘before_title’ => ‘<h3 class=”widget-title”>’,
‘after_title’ => ‘</h3>’,
) );