Can anyone explain to me what it is that makes widgets behave so weirdly?

I'll make some simple change in the Atahualpa Theme Options -- maybe put a solid 2px border around the Widget Container. I'll save the changes and switch to a browser tab with the site loaded.

I'll re-load the page and maybe the border does NOT appear around the widgets ...maybe it does. I'll click on another page on the menu bar and when the new page loads, maybe the widget border will be there, maybe not. Maybe it will appear when I re-load the page ...maybe not the first time I refresh, maybe the third time?!

Something's going on that's decidedly non-digital. I've heard people (even Flynn!) say things about widgets getting "stuck" in a theme. (???).

Perhaps some weird caching going on on your hosting account, or in your browser?


Re: Other widget issues: Widgets can be held hostage by the previous theme after switching to a new theme. In that case switch back to the previous theme, remove the widgets out of the previous theme's sidebar(s), then switch to the new theme again, and the widgets should be available.

Update: The problem seemed to only be happening when I was using Firefox. If I booted up IExplorer and loaded the URL, the pages would load with the correct widgets appearing in the sidebars and the formatting changes would appear as well.

Meanwhile, over if FF I would still not be able to see the changes I'd made. I'd reload a page multiple times, switch from one page to another, some pages that were supposed to have the problem sidebar and widgets showing, others not. And then suddenly, the sidebar would pop into sight.

Latest: I *think* I may have discovered the problem. I just now noticed that in the Dashboard/Themes there was NO theme shown as "Current". Atahualpa was shown below amongst the "Available", but there was just a strange 'empty' space up to the right ion the current spot. ???

I clicked on Atahualpa 3.3.2, and then "activate". Everything seems to be running normally ...though I'm still "watching"

I'm fairly certain that all was usual after I upgraded from Atahualpa 3.2 I had even deleted the older version from /wp-content/themes.

I hate to think how a "partially installed" theme looks to the WP database. If this weren't sort of a "test site", I would be completely uninstalling Atahualpa, deleting ALL theme files and then reloading and re-installing from scratch to make sure that any possible nasty bits of disconnected code would be flushed out of the system.

So! Something else to watch out for!