The right sidebar with widget areas and block tabs? Its visibility is supposed to persist. If you left it open when you last used the widgets screen, it’ll be back. If it was closed, it should stay that way.
I believe the sidebar state is a cookie item. Check you browser console after toggling the sidebar off. Any script errors or warnings could prevent the sidebar state from being properly saved.
Thread Starter
sgumby
(@sgumby)
I removed all widgets from there, closed it, clicked update, left and when I came back it was still open.
Hmmm… curious. I’m not seeing such behavior on my site. Is your site fully updated? We’re currently on 5.9.3. It could instead be your theme or a plugin is somehow preventing normal behavior. Try deactivating all plugins and switching to Twenty Twenty-one theme. You should then see expected behavior. To narrow down the cause, restore your normal theme and plugins, one by one, testing after each.
Thread Starter
sgumby
(@sgumby)
Everything is updated… I know you are trying to trouble shoot but please assume I know what I’m doing. This is every theme I’ve used and is there by default when wordpress is loaded.
I have a screen shot but no way to upload. So I’ll provide a link to it if that’s allowed.
wordpress_widgets.jpg
Thread Starter
sgumby
(@sgumby)
I know that sidebar says woocommerce but its for the default sidebar as well. Whatever sidebar is first is opened. It can have no widgets or 20 and its open. This should not be the default behavior.
Thread Starter
sgumby
(@sgumby)
What I’ll add is this is not a block widget problem… But its more noticeable now because the block widgets take up more vertical space.
wp.org doesn’t host images, hence no ability to upload. Linking to an image elsewhere is fine. Thanks for the image, that’s an entirely different “sidebar” than what I thought you were referring to! My theme doesn’t label widget areas as “sidebar”. It’s kind of an outdated term for a widget area, yet the term persists in common usage.
Anyway, having the top widget area be expanded on entry is “normal” behavior, regardless of the state you left it in. It’s certainly debatable whether such behavior is desirable. Expansion/collapse is managed via script which updates various DOM element attributes, which in turn manages which CSS rules are applied. You can see what changes happen in your browser’s element inspector tool.
It’s feasible to add an admin script which alters the relevant attributes so all widget areas are collapsed on entry, thus hiding the empty add-a-block element. Similarly, different CSS could be applied to make the add-a-block element smaller, but it’s always going to take up some amount of space.
Thread Starter
sgumby
(@sgumby)
Thanks for the response. When I get some spare time I’ll try to find a solution and will post back here if I do.
