Archive and Categories go missing…

Hello,

I am new to the Word Press game, but everything has been wonderful so far.

I just recently encountered a problem that I can’t seem to figure out, so I thought I would ask the people who know best.

Anyway, the issue is with the sidebar. I added a dynamic poll that I made myself with PHP and MySQL. When that poll is on the page, the Categories and Archives do not show up. The header that says “Categories” shows up, but instead of listing the categories it says “No categories.” When I comment out the poll, everything works fine.

Is it possible I am doing something in my poll query that conflicts with the WordPress query? I already checked the variables and it doesn’t look like I am repeating any.

I’m just curious if anybody has any advice on where to go from here.

Thanks a lot!