Sidebars are setup in your theme. The default WP widgets are within WP core and any settings for them are stored in your MySQL Database. A theme, or plugins can add widgets. Same basic process. Custom Widget areas can be added to a child theme by customizing functions.php or even creating new php files and loading them in templates.
Note: please review the WP3.9 Master List re Widgets.
http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-39-master-list?replies=6
Widget options are stored in your MySQL database. They’re not files stored on your server. Unless you have a database backup prior to the glitch, they’re most likely gone.
Thanks for the info! I do have a backup from the night before… but I’m unfamiliar with restoring… and I’ve done some post work that I can’t have overwritten. is it possible to just restore the Widget settings only?
Theoretically you could load you backup file into a new database, examine the wp_options table and locate sidebar_widgets. A copy and paste between databases in something like phpmyadmin would probably work.
If you’ve never fiddled around with your database before, it might be best to leave things well alone and manually restore the widgets. Unless you’re feeling brave 🙂
I’m not THAT brave. As a side note a 2nd site I had not touched in a week also had the sidebars wiped from the same plugin the second I logged in and went to the widget area. They were there before I did that. So something odd is happening. I was using Custom Sidebars and I’ve tossed that for Content Aware Sidebars which is a lot better for my needs anyway.
