New theme forces widgets into the first widget slot?

Hi,

I’ve been developing an extremely widgetized, responsive theme over a few weeks and it’s performing GREAT under a load! It also comes with some new widgets and plugins to really make it rock. But. I’ve come across something that needs to be fixed.

Let’s say a user has a bunch of widgets in their sidebar and then installs my theme. At that point, all their widgets are relocated into the very first widget area of the new theme (which is above the header.) This probably wouldn’t be a huge deal to seasoned users as they’ll understand what happened and what to do, but it will be rather alarming to a casual user, I suspect.

Since this theme has more than 20 widget areas, having all the active widgets jammed above the header graphic upon installation leaves much of the rest of the theme flapping in the wind. ??

Is there a prescribed method of placing their currently-active widgets in particular widgetized locations within my theme so there’s no heart-attack-factor for casual users? I’ve looked all over the ‘net and can’t find anything on this, but I can’t believe that every widgetized theme out there doesn’t have a way around this. Any idea’rs?

Appreciate your insight, thanks!

-WCJ