Widgets in the Sidebar – is this an expected result?

  • I have just started a nice website for our non-profit using WP. I’ve gotten a lot of it nailed down. But widgets in the sidebar is throwing me off. Example: The stock theme I’m using Batavia 1.5.1.1 supplies me with a pretty complete sidebar. But I wanted to add a simple Counter. So I downloaded, installed and activated the Simple Counter plug-in. Went to Widgets and “Add”ed it over on the right hand side. It’s the only one listed there. Went back to check it out and Counter is there but all the other Sidebar content is gone!

    So am I to surmise that when you add content/widgets to the sidebar you have to sacrifice all widgets/links/content that was there before? That can’t be, can it???

    Thanks.

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  • Here’s how it works. You setup a default installation with a theme that i guess it’s widget ready. If you do NOT activate any widget by yourself there are some defaults widgets that are shown. If you decide to activate a widget (like you did) then the default widget setup is overriden by yours.

    What’s that means? That you have to ADD any widget that you like in your widget panel. So if you had links, meta, archives, recent comments or whatever, just go ahead and ADD them to your sidebar. From now on they will be there and you could add or remove each one separetly.

    If you do NOT activate any widget by yourself there are some defaults widgets that are shown.

    Not really. If you do NOT activate any widget than whatever is coded in the sidebar… THAT is shown. Not widgets.

    If you activate even ONE widget – then the widget system overrides anything that is handcoded.

    But to solve the problem: just put the widgets that you wanted to use besides the counter to the sidebar and you’ll be up and running in no time.

    I have about the same question. Ok, all that is understood, the coded stuff was let’s say in sidebar.php, but as soon as the widget is added, then sidebar.php is not used? It does not appear it is added to….So which file do you go to change the results or display? functions.php, perhaps??

Viewing 4 replies - 1 through 4 (of 4 total)
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