Cardinal bug with custom sidebars/widgets

[FlawlessWeb]

Hi,

There is currently a very frustrating bug with Cardinal; lets say you have a custom sidebar with 3 widgets saved. All works fine. However, for testing purposes you might want to disable Cardinal and enable one of the default WordPress themes – 2014 for example.

So you disable Cardinal by enabling 2014. You then want to revert back to Cardinal by enabling it again. Here is the bug – you lose all of the saved widgets within your custom sidebars. The custom sidebars are still there, but all of the widgets saved within those custom sidebars are gone…

Is this a bug isolated to my install of something you are aware of?

[Kyle – SUPPORT]

Hi

The custom sidebars are apart of Cardinal, so if you disable Cardinal and switch to another theme you will lose the saved widgets as the sidebars have been removed

– Kyle

[FlawlessWeb]

Hi Kyle,

You didnt read my post correctly…

Enabling Cardinal again and you lose all of the saved widgets within your custom sidebars…

[Kyle – SUPPORT]

So when you enable twenty fourteen, the widgets are still there?

– Kyle

[FlawlessWeb]

No, when I enable 2014 the custom sidebars and widgets within those sidebars are gone – thats the way it should be.

However, when I re-enable Cardinal again, the widgets that were saved within the custom sidebars are gone.

[Kyle – SUPPORT]

Yes that’s because if you change the theme, the sidebars no longer exist, therefore neither do the widgets. I know what you’re saying, you expect them to save the widgets in the database, but I’m afraid they don’t and that’s not controlled by the theme it’s controlled by WordPress therefore there’s nothing about that that we can do

– Kyle

[FlawlessWeb]

Ah, that is what I feared.

Bit of a disaster situation when you are developing a website. Any idea if WordPress plan to fix this?

[Kyle – SUPPORT]

It’s not very common that people change themes during the development of a website. It’s not really a bug, the custom sidebars are specific to Cardinal, so if you use them, you can’t expect them to stay when you switch to a different theme

– Kyle

[FlawlessWeb]

Id have to disagree with you there. Its very common to switch themes for testing during development. The first thing a plugin author tells you to do if you run into a bug with their plugin is to switch to one of the default wordpress themes and see if the issue is prevalent on that as well.

I still don’t think we are 100% on the same page – I dont expect the custom sidebars I created in cardinal to work if I switch to another theme.

The issue is that when you switch to 2014 for example for some testing; you are faced with a big issue when you enable cardinal again – i.e. The widgets you saved within the custom sidebars you created disappear.

[Kyle – SUPPORT]

We are on the same page, I know what you mean, however there is no way to save widgets when switcthing between themes and that’s not a theme issue, it’s just the way wordpress works, sorry.

– Kyle

[FlawlessWeb]

That is not entirely true.

I have just done some testing with this free plugin:

Custom Sidebars – Dynamic Sidebar Widget Area Manager

With that plugin the ‘bug’ does not exist.

Here is how it works with that plugin:

#1. You create a custom sidebar
#2. Add a widget/s to that sidebar
#3. When you switch themes e.g. From Cardinal to 2014, the custom sidebar remains BUT the widgets saved within that sidebar disappear.
#4. However, here is the big difference between that plugin and Cardinals custom sidebars; when you re-enable Cardinal, the custom sidebar is still there AND the widgets you saved within that custom sidebar are there.

So two things:

#1. Can you replicate the same functionality as the custom sidebars plugin (i.e. set it up so that saved widgets don’t disappear permanently)? That would be ideal as adding another plugin to my setup would ideally be avoided…
#2. Integrate that plugin with Cardinal and its normal sidebar styling etc.

See the two attached screenshots:

‘Custom sidebar widgets’ shows a normal Cardinal sidebar with a custom menu widget.

‘Custom sidebar plugin with Cardinal’ shows a sidebar setup using that plugin – the issue is the styling. The heading ‘shortcodes’ has no styling and the menu items are not separated by a divider etc…

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[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Hi Anthony,

The custom sidebar is a redux extension – I’ll take it up with these guys as to why the widgets don’t remain.

– Ed

[FlawlessWeb]

Thanks Ed.

Look forward to hearing their feedback.

[Rui Guerreiro – SUPPORT]

No Problem. We will let you as soon we got something. Thanks Ed

-Rui

[Swift Ideas – Ed]

Hi Anthony

I was going to take this up with Redux, and then I put a little more thought into it. I don’t think it makes sense that the widget areas remain when you disable the theme. The custom widget area functionality is specific to the theme – the widget areas would no longer be removable without the theme, and it wouldn’t make sense for the sidebars to be written to files outside of the theme.

After all, the functionality comes with the theme – it’s not a separate plugin. As for the styling with the other plugin, it’s unlikely we can style the same as it requires specific heading/span wraps around the title – does this plugin offer the ability to specify that?

– Ed