On one site, I'm using Atahualpa 3.4.2 and WP 2.8.4. PHP 5. Firefox 3.5.3, Mac OS 10.6.

In the footer content area of ATA options, I entered

<?php bfa_widget_area('name=footerarea'); ?>

above the copyright stuff. I saved that. When I go into the Widgets area, I see footerarea1, 2 and 3. To test them, I added text widgets to each one, and they do show up. I guess I don't get how this works. What if I want just one widget in the footer? I did not put 3 cells in the code.

Then I tried the same code above the Loop in the center column.

<?php bfa_widget_area('name=centerwidget'); ?>

This time, I do not see a new widget area called centerwidget in the widgets admin area.

What am I doing wrong?

Paulae,
Your not doing anything wrong. I was playing with the new widgets areas and have discovered there are some problems. You can't have a header and footer widget (or anywhere else I'd guess) at the same time. I dug thru the code a bit and have sent Flynn a note with what I found and am waiting to here from him. I'll post as soon as I get more info.

Whew! I thought I was going nuts.

Being able to easily create new widget areas without hard coding the theme files is the holy grail, so I hope he can come up with the solution for the next release.

In addition to not being able to create widgets in different places, he needs to look at the creation of 3 areas where one was desired.

I too am unable to create widget areas at 2 different places differently. Maximum no of cell area gets repeated everywhere. So eagerly waiting for solution to this question.

But I have been able to create just one cell in footer area or anywhere like this:

<?php bfa_widget_area('name='whatever'&cells=1&align_1=9 &width_1=1000&before_widget=<div id="%1" class="header-widget %2">&after_widget=</div>'); ?>

So the default string of code creates 3 cells, but you can force it to make just one.

that's one of the bugs I found also the string should read

<?php bfa_widget_area('name='whatever'&cells=1&align_1=9 &width_1=1000&before_widget=<div id="%1$s" class="header-widget %2$s">&after_widget=</div>'); ?>

note the '$s' after the %1 and %2

What happens it if you have a header widget or 2 they get loaded, but if you have a footer widget, it loads into the same array occurance wiping out the previous occurance.

I'm looking to see if I can figure out a way to keep both and am still waiting to hear from Flynn

OK, I'll stop messing with it until Flynn comes up with a fix.

I don't see much reason to upgrade other sites to this version of Atahualpa until this bug is fixed, since the extra widget areas feature is the main reason I'd want to make the change.