Solving Widget Problems after WordPress 2.8 upgrade

Alert: Techy post ahead! 

I dedicate this post to the subset of nature/bird bloggers who not only use the WordPress blogging platform, but who also use the “Thesis” theme as their premium design overlay (WordPress is just the background of the site, the design you see “over” it is called a theme). You’re out there! I’ve seen you…it’s so easy to spot a DIY Theme once you know them. In fact, I’ve been surprised at how many of us have independently floated to the same theme… 

This was a big week for WordPress fans because on Wednesday, developers released the upgraded version of WordPress 2.8 “Baker”, affectionately named after the noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker (!). The upgrade fixes several known bugs, but is also faster and allows greater flexibility with widgets, plugins, and easier theme selection and installation.

I backed up my site (highly recommended!) and then clicked the “Upgrade to WordPress 2.8″ button, hoping for the best. For me, the installation went well. but eventually I noticed that my sidebars were not behaving. My Blog page lost its Recent Posts column, which was moved to my Home page. My Home page lost its navigation (“Look Around”), which wound up on my Blog page. To make matters worse, I could not fix the errant sidebar components. In WP 2.8, widgets were built to be dragged and dropped to and from the sidebar during editing, but that wasn’t happening for me.

It’s a wee bit complicated to have different sidebars on different pages of my website, which is a combination static site (from left to right, Home Page through Writing tabs) and a continually updated Blog (last tab on right). That’s why I use a WordPress Plugin called Widget-Context. This allows me to have all sort of neat content on my right-hand sidebar (text boxes, blog rolls, recent posts, images, etc) which appears or disappears on relevant pages. 

Whenever a problem with my WordPress site pops up, I  turn to either WordPress Support Forum or the DIY Themes Support Forum. Many users suggested turning off all my plugins to isolate the problem. I tried, but no dice. 

Then I learned: there is a known incompatibility between Thesis 1.5 and WordPress 2.8 which dismantles the Widgets Panel.  After some reading, I performed the Quick Fix suggested by Kingdom Geek, which meant I had to modify some core php files. Doing so is not hard, but, as a non-programmer,  I tread vewry, vewry lightly (and backup often!).

But that didn’t resolve everything. So, after more searching I found there was an upgrade to the open source Widget-Context plug in that is compatible with WP 2.8 (which, by the way, I had to search and download manually from the developer’s site). Bingo! I could drag and drop widgets and the context function worked great.

I was rather proud of fixing my own problem without dismantling my entire site. So I poured a glass of wine, sat down and started to share it here in my blog. 

And as I typed, my computer beeped. It was an e-mail from Chris Pearson, the developer of Thesis, saying he just released a new version of the theme (Thesis 1.5.1) that solves this problem plus a few others. 

Looks like I could have saved myself a few hours of query and keyboard taps.

But it’s nice to know that developers are out there, working hard, trying to make these awesome but disparate functionalities synchronize and work better for us publishers at little or no cost. I just promised myself I’m going to pick two of my favorite plugins and send a few bucks to the developers within the next month. After all, if I can send  $0.99 to iTunes in exchange for Adam Lambert’s Mad World, I can send a few bucks to a programmer who makes my website look better!  Just like comments and retweets keep us bloggers going, we gotta keep these open source programmers doin’ their thang.

I’m going to install Thesis 1.5.1 tonight and hope for more synchronicity! Happy Friday, and happy upgrading to you!