WIdgets in Sidebar Gone – widgets.php line 80 error

I have the same problem. It just occurred today out of nowhere. The widget sidebar is missing, and this error appears in the ‘Inactive Widgets’ box:

Fatal error: Call to undefined function dynamic_sidebar() in /home/socalbiz/public_html/wp-admin/includes/widgets.php on line 80

Any ideas?
Thank you!
Patty

Hi Patty:

It will be interesting to see what the WP experts come up with. I’m pretty sure this started for me with the 3.5 update. The more I search, the more it seems like a “call” function from the themes, although I did switch to the default 2011 theme, BUT I didn’t flush my browser cache. So I might try that.

(I did deactivate my WP caching system)

There’s a really good explanation about dynamic sidebars here:
https://justintadlock.com/archives/2010/11/08/sidebars-in-wordpress
Note: I have no interest or affiliation with this site – I’m including it here as a reference for others around themes, dynamic side bars and possible problems associated to themes that have not been updated per WP 3.5.1 code or don’t follow coding standards for calling dynamic side bars.

At this point, still no clear resolution to the problem.

No luck …went back and cleared my browser cache, used WP Twenty Eleven theme – still same error message and no widgets/sidebar.

Hopefully one of the awesome WP experts will check this thread and provide answers. ??

This is for Patty and any others that run across this problem. I fixed it this morning. Here’s the detailed procedure I used.

These steps were taking after deactivating all plugins and switching to the twenty eleven theme.

1. deleted my wp-admin directory and all it’s sub dirs
2. Re FTP’d all the files for wp-admin from a newly downloaded 3.5.1 version of WordPress from www.remarpro.com
– Checked for widgets avail under “appearance menu”. No change, problem still present
3. deleted my wp-includes directory and all sub directories
4. Re FTP’d all the files for wp-includes from a newly downloaded 3.5.1 version of WordPress from www.remarpro.com
5.Checked for widgets avail under “appearance menu”. Widgets were BACK! NO ERROR message!
6. Reactivated all plugins
7. Reactivated custom theme
8. Sidebars, widgets all work and site back fully functional.

Obviously what ever file was the problem (corrupted or not copied over) was in the wp-includes directory. JUST copying over files did not resolve the problem. I had to delete that directory and re-upload with latest files to fix this.

In every sense it seemed like a “call” function for the dynamic sidebars coming from theme code, but it wasn’t.

I hope this helps others who find their way here with a similar challenge
Ron

I can confirm and recreate this problem.
I can not really believe it is a corrupted file (even though ronmerk had the problem fixed by rewriting them) for the simple reason that I have a Multisite, on which in SOME sites the sidebar works, and on OTHERS it does not . obviously on Multisite ALL the sites are using the same themes and system files, so this is some other problem we are talking about ..

any luck fixing this? I am going through it now where my multisite instances have no sidebars in the admin so I cannot add widgets.