I discovered the problem was not me at all, but several problems with the widget.php file.
These are the problems I ran into:
1. The "onchange" command for the archive dropdown was listed as "onChange" which caused several errors.
2. <script language="Javascript"> is written as <script lang="Javascript">
3. Even written correctly, <script language="Javascript"> is a deprecated tag and should be <script type="text/javascript"> to render no validation errors.
4. I was getting an error similar to this one TWENTY-SEVEN TIMES (that is 27 errors):
Error Line 481 column 8: ID "links" already defined.
<li id="links" class="widget widget_links"><h2 class="widgettitle">www</h2>
It was also telling me that my li were missing ul's (which they weren't, it was the widget.php causing the problem). Finally, after combing through many websites, forums, posts, asking for help and getting nowhere, I found this:
- On wordpress 2.2.1 you have to add :
$before_widget = preg_replace('/id="[^"]*"/','id="%id"', $before_widget);
before line 397 (after the } else { )
That error does not appear to have been fixed in the new release of WordPress.
I am down to 3 errors and have had no success in getting any help clearing those.