My widgets just got deleted
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Hi. I was trying to edit the page widget to make a hidden page visible in the menu. It didn’t work in the preview, so I exited the page without saving, but it seems to have autosaved, now all my widgets have been deleted. I spent a long time customising them, and now my site navigation is ruined. I can’t find a way to regain access to the old widget page, even though I set it to classic view.
Is there any way to restore my widgets? This is so frustrating. I’m really fed up of these dumb changes you keep making to the UI. It worked fine before! I honestly feel like giving up with this platform!
Site: https://silverssimstuff.wordpress.com.
WP.com: Yes
Correct account: Yes -
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No, I copy pasted the HTML from the wayback machine archive to simulate it.
I made a blog post just now and then straight after, my sidebar got deleted once again. Honestly, I feel like crying. This is beyond a joke.
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Hm, let’s try a simple Paragraph Block as a widget, some text like “testing”
Does it remain if you edit a post? (no need to publish a new one, just edit).
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Update: nope, it’s just reverted randomly back to the default widgets again. I have been accessing the wp-admin so I can archive my posts on to another platform, but I didn’t make any new posts and I don’t think I made any edits either. What is going on?
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Hello there,
I’m sorry to hear of the trouble faced here and it is most unfortunate.
I’ve done a dig and it looks like the theme in use on https://silverssimstuff.wordpress.com is Dusk, which was retired some years in 2014.
WordPress itself has seen a number of changes since then, including the introduction of the block editor and more recently, the new block based widget area.
Based on what you’ve described, it’s possible you’ve run into a bug which won’t be fixed or supported going forward.
You may wish to consider a new theme for the site.
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You may wish to consider a new theme for the site.
I just reconsidered a new host. Thanks anyway.
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Just to clarify, I would have switched to a new theme if that was the only issue, but it’s the whole block nonsense, all these useless gimmicks that make what was simple into something complicated. The platform is just getting so dumbed down, and losing my sidebar was the final push.
Like many others, I’ve been feeling increasingly disillusioned with WP and the .com platform in particular, as we can’t just plugin away the new changes. I only stuck it out this long because I’ve been here 14 years, and we can still access the old dash and editor, but it feels like it’s only a matter of time before the block editor is forced on us, so I’ve decided to get out while I’m ahead.
I really hope you’ll listen to those of us who liked the old simple way of doing things. I’m actually really sorry to be moving my main blog away and I hope that one day you’ll go back to being the best free blog host out there and I can come back. But my hope is running out.
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@silverssimstuff, sorry to hear it. There’s demand from the majority of the community for these features — really it’s the community creating blocks and all of this. And there really are some neat features already here.
But, I can see how your experience with widgets was suboptimal: I was able to duplicate that issue on a test site and will report the bug. Thanks for reporting that. And, blocks are definitely a change as well.
Note if you’re definitely going to self-hosting, the classic editor will be maintained through 2022. There’s also a plugin for classic widgets. You’d just want to be certain to keep up with security: keep everything up to date, don’t install sketchy code, etc.
Also, here’s how to export to self hosting. Here’s how to import back again, should you decide to do that.
And while you self host, the forums at WordPress.org and hopefully your host, too, will be a good resource:
https://wordpress.org/support/forums/All the best.
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