I Can't See the Widgets on My WordPress Dashboard
When you're running your own website or blog, glitches occasionally happen. One minute you have a set of perfectly working features, and the next they're not functioning. While this can be frustrating, you do have options with any blogging service, such as WordPress. If your widgets, or elements in your blog's sidebar, don't display properly within your Dashboard, where you control all elements of your blog, you can make adjustments to bring them into view.
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Find the Widgets
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When you navigate to your WordPress Dashboard's opening page, your widgets are not typically one of the first things you see. That's just the way the platform works. To see the widgets that appear on your blog's sidebar, click the "Appearance" drop-down menu in the left-hand side of the Dashboard and then click "Widgets." You will see a list of the locations where your widgets "live" on your blog along the left-hand, right-hand, or both sides of that page. For example, if you have a left sidebar and a right sidebar, you will see a box for "Left Sidebar" and a box for "Right Sidebar." Click the down arrows next to each heading to see the widgets that live within those sidebars. The widgets that are listed in the main body of the "Widgets" section are the widgets you have the option of adding to your sidebar.
Customize the Dashboard
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While "widgets" are commonly thought of as elements that appear in your blog's sidebar, they also refer to internal features. WordPress has some options for showing your most commonly used widgets right on your Dashboard. From your Dashboard, click the "Screen Options" tab near the top of the page. When the Screen Options menu appears, check the boxes next to the widgets you want to show on your Dashboard. Selections include Recent Comments, Incoming Links and Plugins. Depending on the version of WordPress that you have, you may have different options listed here.
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Update WordPress
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Another issue that may be coming into play with your widgets is that you have an old version of WordPress and you need to upgrade; alternatively, you may have recently upgraded and lost some of your functionality. If either of these cases applies to you, navigate to the "Updating WordPress" page of WordPress.com get a new version or resolve issues with the version you recently installed.
Reset the Theme
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If you've made any changes to your WordPress theme, those changes could be causing your widget issue. Under the Appearance drop-down menu on the left-hand side of the Dashboard, click "Themes," and then click the "Read more" link next to your current theme. When you get to the next page, click the "Activate" button in the right-hand column to restore the original theme.
Plugin Problems
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If you're still having issues with widgets that are not displaying correctly, you can deactivate any plugins you've installed and then reinstall them one by one. After each reactivation, check to see whether your widgets are displaying properly. If you install a particular plugin and discover your widgets are not working again, then you know that plugin was the culprit.
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