Can’t edit website?

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  scrachasniff · Member · Jun 7, 2026 at 1:10 pm

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  Hello,

  I am trying to edit this website but seem to strike several problems. For instance, the background colour does not apply to the entire page but stops at the bottom of the last (and only) blog post. The sidebar menu on the right (Category, Search, Archives and Meta) cannot be changed as far as I can see and WordPress says there are 0 widgets available for this theme. Nor can I add any menus, since I get a message these can only be added through widgets… of which there are none.
  
  I used to keep a WordPress blog many years ago and editing the sidebar menu or creating new pages was very easy. I would appreciate any help!

  The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

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  james3265166 · Member · Jun 7, 2026 at 5:09 pm

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  The formatting and layout issues you are experiencing happen because your current theme is a modern Block Theme. This uses WordPress’s newer Site Editor framework, which completely phases out the legacy ‘Widgets’ and ‘Menus’ screens you might remember from years ago. To fix everything at once, navigate to Appearance > Editor in your dashboard. To resolve the cut-off background color, click the Styles icon (the half-moon contrast circle) in the top-right corner and apply your background color globally to the entire site frame there. For the sidebar, you no longer need a dedicated widgets screen—you can simply click directly on the ‘Category’, ‘Search’, or ‘Archives’ elements right on the visual editing canvas to rearrange or delete them like regular blocks. Finally, you can add and structure your menus seamlessly by inserting a Navigation block directly into your page layout wherever you want it to appear!

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  scrachasniff · Member · Jun 7, 2026 at 6:55 pm

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  Hi, thanks for the quick reply!

  Unfortunately, I cannot find the dashboard path you are describing. Dashboard > Appearance (paint brush icon) has suboptions Themes, Patterns, Customise, Widgets, Menus, Background, Theme Showcase, Fonts.
  
  Customise places me directly in the visual editor of the website, I think, which has Site Identity, Colours, Fonts, Background Image, Menus and Widgets.
  
  There, I can start adding Widgets, which replaces the current four (Category etc.) in the sidebar. This sort of works; I can add an image and buttons but, for instance, the Page list widget says “cannot retrieve pages” no matter what. I can circumvent this using a stack of buttons, though, I suppose.