A mystery why widget areas don't appear on home page

[unklee]

Hi everyone, I have a WP website which uses the Minimum Pro theme, and I have received heaps of help in getting it set up. Thanks to everyone who has helped on this forum!

So now I have another tricky problem. I am setting up a temporary duplicate site to do some testing of alternative designs. I copied all the files across to the new server, and amended the database wp-options file to reflect the new URL. The duplicate site is now functioning OK with just one strange omission - several widget areas on the home page are not showing.

I have added many new widget areas to the site, by adding code to the functions.php file, and then either using hooks, or adding code to another file as required. Most of these new widget areas show in the duplicate site, but only the theme's original widget areas (Home-featured 1-4, etc) show on the front page.

The widget areas I added on the front page, and which should show before the Home-featured widget area, are not showing. They required code in the functions.php file plus in the front-page.php file, and as far as I can tell, the originals and duplicates of these files are identical, and the widgets are set up the same in the dashboard, yet the widget areas show in the original but not in the duplicate.

I just don't know where to start in debugging this. Something is preventing the widget areas from showing, but I can't think of what it could be. My best guess is that there is still something in the database that needs to be changed, but I have no idea what the might be.

Does anyone have any thoughts on what I should look for please? Any ideas welcome, I'm happy to go through a few wrong ideas in the hope of finding the right one. Thanks again.

http://home.exetel.com.au/h2bh/

[Ginger]

You might want to check out DesktopServer. It lets you run up to 3 sites locally on the free version. The best feature is you can create a new site by copying an existing site and it will take care of renaming all the source code files for you. Saves you unnecessary troubleshooting time.

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@gscoolidge | Support Nerd | Website Producer/Tweaker | IDX Integrations | Hosting Options

[unklee]

Hi Ginger, thanks for that suggestion. Setting up my own server has been suggested to me before, but I have always been a little wary, for it seemed to be quite complex. But I have checked out DesktopServer and it certainly looks attractive. Although I'm not sure if I can download my existing site using the free version.

I think I'd still prefer to fix up what I have, if I could, but your suggestion may turn out to be the only way. I'll look into it further. Thanks.

[unklee]

Hello again Ginger,

Well you were 100% right! Thanks.

I downloaded the free version of Desktop Server and it installed very easily. Then I took the latest archive (website and database) from my Backup WordPress plugin and put it in the Desktop Server Blueprints folder. And it all worked straight off!

It created a new (dummy) URL. It even seems to have automatically changed all the links to the new URL. It is an excellent product, so easy. I was worried that might be a difficult solution, and it was easy.

Thanks again.

[Author]

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