[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #17979: Avoid losing widgets when switching themes

[WordPress Trac]

#17979: Avoid losing widgets when switching themes
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 Reporter:  lancewillett                         |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement                          |      Status:  new
 Priority:  high                                 |   Milestone:  3.3
Component:  Widgets                              |     Version:  2.9
 Severity:  normal                               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:  ux-feedback has-patch needs-testing  |
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Comment (by trevogre):

 I think this might be a bandaid. When I think about widget configurations
 for themes I think about wanting to set an forget them. And if I change
 themes and then change back I would expect that the widget configuration
 with the theme should stay with the theme. So nothing I do in one theme is
 relevant in the other but the settings are maintained.

 Also, it seems important to be able to try out a widget configuration
 without having to take a bucket of notes on what you are doing. So it
 would seem extremely useful to have a post style history of your widget
 configuration so that you can roll back.

 Maybe this could be accomplished with a widget_settings custom post type.
 So everytime you make a change it saves a new version of the widget
 settings for a given sidebar / theme / or all widget settings, in a custom
 post. And then put in a rollback mechanism that allows you to recover a
 previous set. Or better yet be able to make the configurations and use the
 scheduling mechanism or other logic to do a/b tests and publish different
 configurations.

 I guess I think that anything that wordpress takes seriously needs
 versioning. We have versioning outside with git and subversion. We have
 versioning with posts/pages/custom posts. But the rest of the database
 sucks for versioning. You have to rely on outside solutions to do backup
 and recovery.

 It seems to me that backup and recovery should live in the land of
 disaster recovery not as a tool to recover data or settings to a previous
 state.

 So the goal of having distinct official approaches to versioning in
 development and production environments that cover all code and data seems
 to be a good one. Without relying on any external service having wordpress
 specific features. (Meaning you should be able to use any backup mechinism
 and not need a special one like vaultpress).

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Ticket URL: <http://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/17979#comment:52>
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