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[Edit 12/07/06] The Widgets plugin has now been fixed thanks to Andy Skelton.

I have received a report that the Widgets plugin isn’t working as it should be on WP-Andreas09 and The Chameleon theme. This was a bit of a surprise as I am running the Chameleon theme here without problems and many people seem to be running WP-Andreas09 also without problems.

At first I couldn’t replicate the problem but then re-downloaded the Widgets plugin to see if there had been changes. Once the newly downloaded plugin was installed on my test server the problems became very apparent as the Widgets could be dragged and dropped and the changes saved but it does not show on the site. The plugin has been updated as the stock Widgets are now below the drop areas rather than on the left where they used to be, although the version number has remained the same.

Unlike most, but not all, Widgetized themes I used the built in functions to rename the sidebars, to “Left Sidebar”, “Right Sidebar” etc. rather than the default “Sidebar 1″, “Sidebar 2″ and so on. I have partially resolved the problem by changing the code so they are named by number as the default, which has allowed the changes to show up on the site. I still prefer to name the sidebars as it seems to make more sense and be easier to tell which drop area is which but it looks like I am not going to be able to do that at the moment.

However another problem still remains. To get some of the sidebar Widgets to display properly, I have redefined some of the defaults. According to the documentation if you redefine a Widget with the same name as a default it replaces it. There is an example given for the Search Widget in the documentation as most people will want to use the themes styled search rather than the default Widget one. For some reason this is no longer working and the redefined widget no longer replaces the default one.

My theme is not the only one affected as I have downloaded a few themes where the author has redefined the default widgets and these are not showing on the page as they should either!

I don’t know if this is a bug in the Widgets code or if they have changed the way it is done and not updated the documentation accordingly. It may even be my stupidity and something I have overlooked but it is also affecting themes of other people so something has definitely changed somewhere.

I have emailed the Widgets developers to see if they are aware of a problem. I will also persevere and try and find a solution myself.

In the meantime if you want to use WP-Andreas09 or the Chameleon theme I would suggest that either you stick with the old version of the Widgets plugin or make do without the Widgets. Once I find a solution I will update the themes.

[Edit] I have now downloaded and tested more Widgetized themes and it definitely appears that the Widgets plugin does not work with named drop areas and is not allowing the default Widgets to be redefined. Looks like it may be worth waiting to see if an update is forthcoming. If anybody wants a copy of the old Widgets plugin that does work as it should, please contact me and I’ll email it to you.

This entry was posted on Sunday, July 9th, 2006 at 7:37 pm and is filed under WordPress, WordPress Themes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.