Have you ever changed WordPress themes and lost your widgets in the process?

You know how it goes… you think to yourself, “Self! How about trying out a new theme on this here blog o’ mine?!” So you perform the old theme switcheroo, only to notice something a tad disturbing: your sidebar widgets have disappeared.

“Eek!” you think, followed swiftly by, “Well, I’ll just switch back to my original theme and all will be right with the world again! This new theme isn’t actually right for me anyway and I prefer my original design!”

So, the reverse switcheroo happens in double quick time. But: still no sidebar widgets!

It’s like the widget equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle… when you change WordPress themes, your precious widgets seemingly disappear. And changing back to your original theme doesn’t always bring the widgets back from the ether.

The reason why this happens is that each theme uses unique IDs for its sidebars, and widgets are ‘attached’ to specific sidebars. When you change themes, the new theme therefore doesn’t recognise the widgets in the old sidebar because the old sidebar’s ID doesn’t exist in the new theme.

The widgets aren’t really lost – often they’re found lurking in the inactive widgets area and need to be dragged back into the sidebar. Easy enough if you only have a couple of widgets, but reconstructing an elaborate sidebar can be a pain. Sometimes, too, things go wrong in the whole process, and widgets end up floating free or otherwise stuck and inaccessible.

It can be a frustrating experience, to say the least.

Enter the Widget Saver plugin!

The Widget Saver plugin, developed by Zorgbargle specially for Phenomenoodle, is a godsend when switching back and forth between themes by allowing you to save your widgets for your current theme before changing to a new theme. In the event that you then return to your original theme only to find your widgets still missing, you can use the restore function to return your initial theme sidebar to its original state. In worst case scenarios where widgets become stuck, you can use the plugin’s reset function to remove all widgets and return to factory defaults.

Because of the little issue of different sidebar IDs in different themes, the Widget Saver plugin won’t unfortunately allow you to magically transport your sidebar widgets from one theme to another. But it will make life much more pleasant for those times when you want to try out new themes on your blog by keeping your original widget settings in a safe place for you until you return.

You can read more about the Widget Saver plugin and download it via our Free Resources page.