Archived posts?
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My site is only showing archived posts – no widgets either. I’m not sure how that happened. Any ideas?
WP.com: Yes
Correct account: YesThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Here’s what I’m seeing at the site you listed: https://d.pr/i/mTCF47
It doesn’t appear to be out of the ordinary.
Would you mind describing what’s missing?
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Thanks for checking it out. This is/was an active blog with several widgets on the right side bar, including links to shop, view catalogs, see “About Me” info, search bar, etc. The only thing showing now is the Archives, which is a very small part of my blog. I haven’t updated in awhile but was trying to when I discovered this.
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Hi there,
I noticed that your site looks a bit different from how it appeared when staff-blorbo took his screenshot. Have you been editing and changing widgets since then?
I haven’t updated in awhile but was trying to when I discovered this.
To clarify, the previous widgets were there and appearing correctly, but they went missing after you tried to edit them to update their content?
Thanks for confirming.
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Thank you for your reply.
A few months after my last post I was trying to add a new post and was adding it just fine but then when I would preview it before publishing it I noticed that the only widgets were the archived ones.
I looked into what I could and couldn’t find the answer as to why they were missing. So today I reached out to the forum.
Yes, since the screenshot today I thought to myself that I guess I’m going to have to add the widgets back. So I added two of them and have a few more to go but it’s slow going because I don’t understand the new formatting with the blocks. I’ve had this blog for well over 10 years and was used to how things were, and since I’m not very good with things like this when something completely new comes I struggle with it . I’m just wondering why it happened and could it possibly happen again.
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Hi there,
The widgets system in the WordPress software was changed in WordPress 5.8 that came out a few months ago, turning widgets into blocks.
Since then we’ve had a few cases of widgets going missing, especially on sites with older themes, and it looks like that might be what happened here. However, in the cases reported so far, the widgets went missing only after the site owner visited the Widgets page to make a change to widgets.
From your description it sounds like you noticed them missing when previewing a post from the editor, without ever having visited the widgets screen, correct? Is there a possibility you may have made a change to your widgets at some point in the past few months, and perhaps just didn’t notice right away that the widgets had gone missing?
I ask as we’re still trying to pin down the exact cause of this bug, so any new info we can add to the bug report is valuable.
In the meantime, go to the Widgets page at https://jackiestamps4fun.wordpress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php, and click on Inactive widgets. All your original widgets should appear there.
You’ll see there’s a bunch of old, empty text widgets. I recommend you delete those first, just to make things easier for yourself. You can use Shift-click to select multiple widgets and delete theme at the same time. This short GIF show the steps:
Once you’ve cleared out the widgets you no longer want, you can bulk-move the remaining ones back to the sidebar widget area. Here’s another GIF showing how:
Click Update, and check your site. The widgets should be back. If not, please let us know.
All that said, the common thread in all the cases we’ve seen is that it’s happening on sites using an outdated theme, and your theme, Misty Look, has been retired for almost a decade. That means it hasn’t received any updates in many years, and might not work correctly with recent changes to WordPress.com. So it might be a good idea to start thinking about giving your site a redesign with a new theme. But that’s completely up to you :)
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I ask as we’re still trying to pin down the exact cause of this bug, so any new info we can add to the bug report is valuable.
Correction: It appears this bug is already fixed, but it’s almost certain that your site was affected by it before that fix went through. If you restore the widgets as I described above, this shouldn’t happen again.
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Oh wow, this is great news! I’m going to try to go through the steps and hope it works. I greatly appreciate your thoroughness! Crossing my fingers!
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I was able to add some widgets – thanks so much! Now to figure out how to move them where I want and update with correct links, etc. I cannot thank you enough!
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