Theme preview empties sidebar on active theme

[La Geek]

How to reproduce:

1.) Insert at least one widget into a sidebar. You can insert one with Appearance -> Widgets or Appearance -> Customize -> Widgets. This makes no difference in its (bug) result.

2.) Go to Appearance -> Themes. Click "Live Preview" on an inactive theme. Wait until you see the Live Preview. Now click on left top the button Cancel.

3.) Go to frontend and check, if the widget is still there. It is not. The sidebar is empty. In my test this concerns also older widgets, imo, it concerns all widgets.

[jynmeyer]

This was a major issue for me.
I had a whole sidebar of various widgets- some that were customized with code- and after going in to explore what the new customize features were and then canceling out, the whole sidebar was gone.
Most were dumped into the "Unused Widgets with saved settings" box however the customized settings were gone and I had to redo everything.

Im afraid to go into the Customize page now.

[ocean90]

Confirmed.

[obenland]

Tested it a bit on WordPress.com, and it looks like widgets do not disappear, if the active and the previewed theme use the same sidebar IDs. Like when testing with newer default themes.

[obenland]

gcorne identified L1424 and L1509 in widgets.php to possibly have the wrong logic.

See ​https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2014-04-18&sort=asc#m836556

[westonruter]

Agree with gcorne. The logic needs to be inverted, as when in the customizer, no change should be made yet. Introduced in r28124 for #27767.

For background on the introduction of the 'customize' value for the $theme_changed argument, see ​https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2014-04-14&sort=asc#m832791

[ocean90]

Replying to westonruter:

For background on the introduction of the 'customize' value for the $theme_changed argument, see ​https://irclogs.wordpress.org/chanlog.php?channel=wordpress-dev&day=2014-04-14&sort=asc#m832791

Was surprised as I saw this, because there was no patch with 'customize' value which I have tested. Next time we should create a new patch, test again and then commit, when we handle which such a complex system as the Widget Customizer is.

[La Geek]

@Test
27897.patch works like a charme! Can switch themes, theme previews, activate and deactivate now and all widgets remain :)

[chipbennett]

Patch has not been committed yet.

[westonruter]

Replying to ocean90:

Was surprised as I saw this, because there was no patch with 'customize' value which I have tested. Next time we should create a new patch, test again and then commit, when we handle which such a complex system as the Widget Customizer is.

Absolutely. The change to allow retrieve_widgets('customize') happened right before commit, as noted above. I also should have double-checked what got committed in r28124 since it didn't come from a tested patch.

[nacin]

In 28161:

Fix logic inversion in [28124] to ensure widgets stay with themes during a theme switch.

fixes #27897.

[nacin]

In 28162:

Fix logic inversion in [28124] to ensure widgets stay with themes during a theme switch.

Merges [28161] to the 3.9 branch.

props gcorne.
fixes #27897.

[westonruter]

I've been seeing a few reports of the widgets being all deactivated upon upgrade to 3.9 even though they say they never visited the Customizer: ​https://wordpress.org/support/topic/all-widgets-are-gone-after-update-to-39?replies=3

[westonruter]

#28060 was marked as a duplicate.

[nacin]

#22834 was marked as a duplicate.

[westonruter]

In #28183 it is reported that the upgrade to 3.9.1 causes the widgets to vanish from the sidebars. I've asked for further information.