Hello, great work to everybody because I have had great help via this forum.

To increase the search specifics I have used wp custom fields search plugin. Everything is working great except that the widget css doesn't seem to apply to this plugin.

I have tried this plugin on other 2 themes like Transblack 1.0 by AskGraphics and Videotheme and it looks fine with those themes but not for when I use atahualpa.

Using atahualpa 3.5.3, wordpress 3.0.1

Any pointers? thanks.

Use Firebug with Firefox to determine the CSS selectors.

I did and it is showing that the div.widget css is not being applied to it. Is there aw ay to even wrap the div around a widget in the sidebar?

You just use the selectors the widget already has.

Not all plugin authors use the same name conventions for the ID's and CLASS's they use in their widgets. Thus it becomes impossible to be able to style all widgets via the theme options.

In the case that you choose a widget that does not use the themes widget styling (because the author used different names) it becomes your responsibility to look at the generated source of the page and find the CSS Selectors you need to use and then create the CSS Selector and rules to style the widget, and put that code in the CSS Inserts option.

Ahhh if only everyone could be consistant...but that's what makes life (and widget sytling) interesting.

Alright. I'll give that a shot, thank you

Ok, so here's what I've done so far, I know we're close to it but I just don't know how to complete the last leg of this:

I've used firebug on the widgets admin area and figured out that the div id needed to wrap around the wp custom fields search widget is:

<div id="db_customsearch_widget-3" class="widget widget_db_customsearch_widget">the widget's code</div>

I know the div id above is correct because I've used the "Edit Html" feature in firebug and used the div id to wrap the widget and it has appeared how I wanted it to be.

The problem right now is try to bring that into reality. How do I wrap the widget with this new div id that isn't there originally?

It looks like you are not quite understanding all this. You don't determine a selector and then "wrap a div id around something. The widget in question already has an ID or CLASS applied to it. If you have determined that db_customsearch_widget-3 is the ID that is applied to it then you use that ID to apply CSS to the widget my placing code in ATO>Add HTML/CSS Inserts>CSS Inserts. For example to change the color of the text you would use something like

#db_customsearch_widget-3 {
color: #dddddd;
}

To make the text gray.

If what I just said is confusing you should go to w3schools.com and run through some tutorials on CSS.