Edin – Missing sidebar widget
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Hello,
The sidebar widget seems to have disappeared from my blog. I am using the free Edin theme, and I noticed this today.
Instead of the 7 widget options, I now only see 6. Does anyone know what the problem is?
Here’s a screenshot of what I see: bit.ly/edinsidebar.
Any help would be appreciated.
Thank you,
AG
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
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Hi, AG
You’ll still find the sidebar widget area at you WP Admin widgets page, https://mdde610portfolio.wordpress.com/wp-admin/widgets.php. One of the peculiarities of the Customizer is that it only displays widgets that are available for the page displayed in the previewer. You’ve got a static front page with the Edin theme‘s front page template assigned. There’s no sidebar widget area on that page because it’s a full-width template page. The sidebar widget area displays on the blog page, archives pages, single posts, and static pages with templates that aren’t full-width.
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You’ll also find, for example, that on the blog page and archive pages the footer widget areas are hidden at Customize > Widgets.
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@doc – In a way this makes sense to me because you are customizing a specific template. In other words, you’ll only see the widget areas available on the template you are customizing.
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In a way this makes sense to me because you are customizing a specific template. In other words, you’ll only see the widget areas available on the template you are customizing.
Exactly right – the idea behind the customizer is that you’re customizing the page that’s currently being viewed – so only actively visible widget areas are listed. Changing pages in the Customizer allows you to edit different areas as they become available on the screen :)
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I follow the reasoning behind it, but its not what I would call an intuitive design choice. Some potential problems:
1. A lot of members don’t know that you can potentially change which widget areas are displayed by moving to another page at Customize > widgets. In the WP Admin Widgets page, all widget areas have displayed since I began using WordPress.com eight years ago, and they still do.
2. By default, the Customizer opens to the front page of a site. If the front page is full-width, as is the case in the present topic, and as is typically the case when a site has gallery/grid/tiled images style front page. Examples of the latter:
- a. Sites using themes with a grid-based or tiled format on the posts page, where each image in the grid or in the tile rows link to a corresponding individual post, when the front page is set to display the posts page.
- b. Sites using themes with the Portfolio Page template option, where the content of the portfolio consists of rows of image and title links, when the front page is set to display a static page with the portfolio page template assigned.
- c. Sites with a static front page assigned to Grid Page (in some cases), Homepage, or Showcase Template (in some cases; Skylark) templates.
d. Sites with a paneled front page feature.
In such cases sidebar widget areas will not be included in the list of widgets at Customize > Widgets, at the default previewer setting, even if sidebar widget areas are available on those themes.
3. New or relatively inexperienced users who haven’t read the WordPress.com theme guide corresponding to a theme, or perused its demo, may never for a moment suspect that other widgets, than those they find in the menu when the previewer is on the front page, exist.
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Correction:
may never for a moment suspect that other widget areas, than those they find in the menu when the previewer is on the front page, exist.
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You make an interesting point – I’ve made a note for the future consideration on Customizer updates.
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