This is likely a newbie question but I can't find it answered so here it goes ... BTW, I'm developing on XP Pro, WP 2.7.1, Atahualpa 3.3.3, etc.

I'm getting ready to set up widgets on my new site (currently in dev mode) but I'm a bit confused about which BFA widgets to add.

In Available Widgets it shows I can add (among others): BFA Recent Comments and BFA Subscribe. And yet, I have both RSS Posts and Comments Icons (both of which work) in the header area of the page already.

I'm "assuming" these were default widgets included in the theme? So I'm not sure why I need to add them again?

There are also "Recent Posts" and "Meta" widgets already in the right side-bar of my site, and Archive and Categoriies widgets already existing on the left side-bar, but these all seem to be marked as "Add" in Available widgets as well.

What am I missing?

Thanks in advance.

You can use what widgets yoou want. Per the readme.txt in the ATAHUALPA333 folder:

6. The theme will automatically add 4 additional widgets to the list of available widgets:

BFA Recent Comments
An alternative to the default "Recent Comments" widget

BFA Popular Posts
Lists the posts with the most comments

BFA Popular in Cat
Lists the posts with the most comments, in the given category. Will only appear on category pages.

BFA Subscribe
Provides a Feedburner "Subscribe by Email" form, plus Posts and
Comments RSS links & buttons

Thank you for taking the time to reply ... but ... maybe I asked the question in the wrong way.

It seems to me that a number of the BFA plugins/widgets are already installed in the header and right and left side-bars and yet they're not showing up as being installed on my Admin page's "Available Widgets" page.

If I add them again, so they do show up as being added on the Admin's Widgets page, won't it duplicate widgets?

Or, alternatively, are the RSS and Comment icons in the header, and Recent Posts on the right side-bar (all of which showed up without me doing anything at all) NOT the BFA widgets? In which case, how do I drop the ones that already exist so they don't duplicate the functions of the BFA ones?

This is a learning process for me, and I have "kind of an issue" with unexplained phenomena ... As my mom used to say: "What! Do you need a blueprint!?" Of course, my answer was: "Yes".

(Wish I had a way of inserting a screen shot so I could show you what I mean without having to have my website up.)

The RSS and Comment icons are controled by the option ATO->RSS Settings->Show Post Feed icon? and the other options in that tab. These are seperate from the sidebar widgets.

Things that go in the sidebars are contrled by the WP Dashboard->Appearances->Widgets. There happen to be a couple BFA widgets provided with the theme. If you swap themes, you will see these widgets vanish from WP Dashboard->Appearances->Widgets

juggledad,

An "Ahhhhh-hahhhh!" is in order to Part 1 of my problem. I hadn't gotten to looking into ATO-->RSS Settings yet ... seems silly of me in retrospect but there is so much to learn and too little time to learn it. (Which is why I'm doc'g all the steps I'm taking and will have them posted on my site as TechNotes, so someone else can get up and running faster).

As for the side-bars, maybe this is a WP bug but when I go (back into) Appearance --> Widgets, whether I select the right sidebar or the left sidebar, WP reports Zero widgets.

I think this was the main thing that was throwing me. I have the aforementioned widgets already in place on both side-bars but not a one of them is listed as being there ... hence the notion of adding duplicate widgets and how on earth do I configure (or even delete) the ones that are already present.

Thanks for your help.

Originally Posted by fromtheranks

juggledad,

As for the side-bars, maybe this is a WP bug but when I go (back into) Appearance --> Widgets, whether I select the right sidebar or the left sidebar, WP reports Zero widgets.

I think this was the main thing that was throwing me. I have the aforementioned widgets already in place on both side-bars but not a one of them is listed as being there ... hence the notion of adding duplicate widgets and how on earth do I configure (or even delete) the ones that are already present.

Thanks for your help.

I am having identical issues and would be grateful for any help.

Thanks!!

Okay. I think I have this figured out. It was a bit of a pain tracking it down on the WP site (I couldn't tell you now the search string I used to find it) so, allow me to doc the answer for others who have the same questions:

(1) how did widgets get on my site by default when I can't find them listed in Appearance --> Widgets, and

(2) what happens with those widgets if I change something?

The answer is covered in this topic: http://wordpress.org/support/topic/245978. Look for the Reply by MichaelH (Moderator) -- third post down.

But, briefly, it is that (a) WordPress provides a list of default widgets (Pages, Archives, Categories, Blogroll and Meta), and (b) that these are NOT shown as being installed on the Appearance --> Widgets admin page for this reason:

The moment that you add a single Widget, WP has code that ignores ALL of their own default widgets and from there on only displays the ones you've selected.

The assumption appears to be that if you are "tinkering" with Widgets you are going to set everything up the way you wish it so they ignore their defaults from there on out.

I tested this out on a second development installation I have that is still set to WP's Default Theme (until I can get to it), and WP's default widget logic functions exactly as described.

Hope this helps.