How to Display CMS Blocks in Magento Using Widgets?

Magento 2 CMS blocks are a great way to drive customer's attention to certain products, offers, or services. Although creating these blocs is super easy, adding them to Magento pages poses a challenge. Why? Because there are different ways to add CMS blocks to pages in Magento. 

Today we'll cover the most popular one — widgets. This method is the most popular since it allows you to choose the exact page and location to add CMS blocks. However, if you want to add CMS blocks directly to the page content, use the WYSIWYG editor.

Should we start?

Display Magento CMS Blocks Using Widgets

1. Navigate to Content > Elements > Widgets and press the Add Widget button.

2. Choose the CMS Static Block as a Type, set the Design Theme and press Continue.

Important: you won't be able to change these moving forward.

Magento 2 Widgets

3. Fill out the Storefront Properties.

  • Give your widget a Title.
  • Assign it to Store Views it should be active on.
  • Set the Sort Order.

Note: the smaller the number the higher it appears on the list of widgets. 

Magento 2 Widget Options

 4. Set the exact page and place where you want to display the CMS block in the Layout Updates.

  • Choose any Category, Product or Generic Pages to place the CMS block.
  • Select a Container, the exact plane on the page where you want to display your CMS block.

Magento 2 Widget Layout Updates

5. Go to Widget Options and select the CMS block to assign to this widget.

Magento 2 Widget Options

6. Save the widget and check your CMS block out on the storefront. Sometimes you might need to clear Magento caches too.

  cms block in magento shopping cart

Watch this short video to follow the step-by-step instructions on how to add CMS block to Magento pages using widgets:

If, for some reason, you want to stop displaying certain CMS blocks, you need to disable the CMS block, not a widget.

But why do all the manual work if you can disable and enable CMS blocks automatically?

Display Magento CMS Blocks Automatically

Although widgets help you display CMS blocks in Magento, they have no time or date limit. They are static. This means that every time some offer expires, you need to disable a CMS block or assign a new one to the widget. 

But now if you schedule CMS blocks. Just specify the date, time and days of the week to display CMS blocks and they will be enabled and disabled automatically.

magento dynamic blocks date

One more way to add CMS blocks to Magento pages is through category settings. But note that Magento categories have specific places dedicated to promo blocks. So, if you want to define where to display a block on a page, it's best to use widgets.