[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #17979: Avoid losing widgets when switching themes

[WordPress Trac]

#17979: Avoid losing widgets when switching themes
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 Reporter:  lancewillett             |       Owner:  ryan
     Type:  task (blessed)           |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  high                     |   Milestone:  3.3
Component:  Widgets                  |     Version:  2.9
 Severity:  normal                   |  Resolution:  fixed
 Keywords:  has-patch needs-testing  |
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Comment (by trevogre):

 PaulGregory,
 I don't know that is to late, other than then issue of wordpress being
 fanaticly backwards compatible. Though I'm not sure changing this again
 could be considered creating an incompatiblity because its really just a
 functional change to how the ui expresses the configuration and carries
 them over during theme changes. I would think that this could be updated
 to be more reliable.

 I don't know if you read some of the previous commments but I made a few
 long ones detailing what I thought was the proper way to move widgets
 forward. I think at that point there was just to much momentum on the idea
 of auto allocating them.

 I completely agree that auto allocatation is weak. As it doesn't respect
 sidebar context at all.

 I did think it was a bug because when the items dropped to inactive
 widgets they would lose their group on sidebars. So in an environment with
 multiple admins or just if you weren't paying close attention it would be
 really easy to not recall the proper configuration after your widgets got
 dumped.

 To my knowledge this patch didn't solve that problem in any meaningfull
 way.

 In my mind there is a much larger issue here. That changing anything to a
 match a theme that is outside the theme is a recipe for losing your
 settings. I would rather have every wordpress setting have unique data for
 each theme that is enabled. Widgets, enabled plugins, and anything that
 might need to change to suit a different theme.

 I love the idea of being able to change themes, but currently there really
 is no point. You have to pick your theme when you begin development and
 never change it unless you want to really confuse yourself and risk
 blowing up your site.

 Unless you use totally benign themes with almost zero configuration or
 customization.

 Anyway, +1 to your commentary. I would like to see this revisited.

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/17979#comment:115>
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