Lost Widgets in FSE Transition

[cat-og]

Quick summary

When a user changes from a current theme with widgets to an FSE theme, their widgets are lost and must be recreated from scratch using FSE tools.

• Going to /wp-admin/widgets.php returns this error: The theme you are currently using isn’t widget-aware, meaning that it has no sidebars that you are able to change. For information on making your theme widget-aware, please follow these instructions.

• The linked instructions direct to a WordPress.org page, and instructions require HTML knowledge to add, and does not bring former widgets back.

• I tried with the FSE theme Stewart as well, which includes a sidebar in the template, but that is not recognized as a widget area. Going to wp-admin showed the same error.

Steps to reproduce

1. Begin with any theme including a widget area and active widgets.
2. Change to any FSE theme.
3. Widgets are gone, along with option to edit them from the Dashboard.
4. Resetting to a theme without FSE resolved this except that all widgets had been moved in 'inactive widgets' and had to be manually restored to their former location.

What you expected to happen

Ideally, the wp-admin version of the widgets page would continue to exist, as the Menus page does. Those could then be accessed in the same way that the menus are from the Editor.

What actually happened

Widgets disappeared from FSE entirely, even when I created a sidebar, or used the theme (Stewart) that included a sidebar.

Context

This is also an accessibility issue. A user I was working with could have benefitted from FSE, but that would require them to almost entirely redesign their site. As the user was blind, they stated that they could not see their current widgets (which had been added by their designer) nor could they use FSE tools to recreate them. Transitioning to an FSE theme would require they hire another designer to redo their site, aside from just the FSE elements they wanted to install.

• The original question was regarding how to see comments in the Blog Post feed on their Homepage.

Simple, Atomic or both?

Simple, Atomic

Theme-specific issue?

Any FSE theme.

Browser, operating system and other notes

No response

Reproducibility

Consistent

Severity

Some (< 50%)

Available workarounds?

Yes, difficult to implement

Workaround details

This could be worked around by either abandoning the theme and the FSE editor, or by recreating the widgets manually, redoing work already set up.

[Robertght]

Hey @cat-og ! This is the current expected behavior on widgets and FSE/FSE-compatible themes. The widgets do not have a dedicated area to show up as that functionality is not registered. Also, the sidebar component from a FSE theme does not share the same system as a classic theme would so in this case there's not a lot that can be done.

Pinging @annezazu for a double check on this one in case there are any plans related to the above, but if nothing else rises, I think we can close.

[annezazu]

What's described here is correct for the current experience. AFAIK, there is work around using template parts as a migration pathway but I need to confirm that's being explored for widgets as well/what's expected in the long run. It does seem disadvantageous to fully lose everything in widgets 🤔 . For now, there has been an idea floated of having inactive template parts similar to inactive widgets as one way to preserve content upon switching, since widgets generally will exist in template part areas (header, footer, sidebar): WordPress/gutenberg#31397

[Greatdane]

Added to cross-repo watch list for core issue; WordPress/gutenberg#31397