You’re missing the closing single quote on the sidebar names:
<div id='left'>
<?php get_sidebar('left'); ?>
</div>
<div id='right'>
<?php get_sidebar('right'); ?>
</div>
Thanks esmi but that’s not it.
That was my typo while posting in the forum. Actually, if I really was missing the quotes, it wouldn’t work at all.
what is the register sidebars code in your functions.php ?
what is the code in your sidebar-left/right.php ?
The code in the sidebars is untouched form the default “sidebar.php”.
did you actually drag different widgets into the different sidebars?
as you know, without widgets dragged into the sidebars, they will just show some default code that was hardcoded into the sidebar-abc.php.