Can't remove custom sidebar widget

Functions file? Or maybe a sidebar widget coded as a plugin? Or hard-coded into the sidebar.php file?

Yeah hardcoded is the first thing I thought of when it didn’t show up in the widgets list. He’s using Thesis, so I first looked in the custom files, since those would likely be the only ones changed…but when there wasn’t anything out of the ordinary there, I started going through others. Like I was saying, I got so desperate I started to change all the file extensions to txt so I could search the code within the files, but I’ve still turned up nothing.

And I’m almost positive it doesn’t have anything to do with plugins because there aren’t any even active that would be close to that. Most of the plugins are just security ones. The closest thing would be “Shortcode Exec PHP”, which I wouldn’t think would be it, but I deactivated it anyway…still there.

Is there a better way to search for the widget code in the website files?

Another thing is, if you look at the source code for the page as it’s displayed, it shows up labeled as a multimedia box…

<div id="sidebars">
			<div id="multimedia_box" class="custom_box">
				<div id="custom_box">
<center><object classid=".......

And he has the multimedia box enabled as a sidebar, but it’s empty in the widgets list. And on the Design Options page in the Thesis installation, both the Multimedia Box and the Feature Box are disabled.

Have you tried firefly or developer tools to maybe identify where it is coming from.

Well, technically there isn’t a problem. We just don’t want the widget there anymore and want to remove the code. But I can’t find the dang thing anywhere.

I can’t figure out how he got it there or how it’s even appearing

URL please.

https://thinksy.elementfx.com/blog/

It’s the animated “superbomb” widget there. You’ll see it appears only on post/archive pages.

He said he actually set it that way on purpose…as in he was actually able to insert the code (somewhere) and set (or code) the properties for what kind of pages it appeared on.

But like I said, I can’t figure out how he did this, or even where this thing is within the website.

Is there a practical way to find it?

How exactly do you know what you’re looking for code-wise? When you run your search, what are you searching for exactly?

He had a link to where the widget code came from, so I was hunting for that:

https://www.tomwoods.com/superpac-superbomb-widget/

But like I said, I’ve looked all through the site files and can’t find it, and it’s not there in the widget list. How else might I search?

https://www.tomwoods.com/superpac-superbomb-widget/ shows the following code

<center><object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ codebase=”https://fpdownload.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,0,0″ width=”200″ height=”390″ id=”countdown” align=”middle”>
 <param name=”allowScriptAccess” value=”sameDomain” />
 <param name=”movie” value=”https://www.revolutionpac.com/widget_small.swf” /><param name=”quality” value=”high” /><param name=”bgcolor” value=”#ffffff” /><embed src=”https://www.revolutionpac.com/widget_small.swf” quality=”high” bgcolor=”#ffffff” width=”200″ height=”390″ name=”countdown” align=”middle” allowScriptAccess=”sameDomain” type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” pluginspage=”https://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer” />
 </object></center>

So do a search of the site looking for “getflashplayer” or “revolutionpac”

kmessinger I could be wrong on this but it sounds like that’s what he was already doing.

tbonees, if that’s the case, and you’ve checked through all the website files and haven’t found that code, that means the only other place it could be is the database. That would mean it’s not hardcoded into the site, but rather a data entry somewhere…

I know you said the Multimedia Box is disabled, but go back in the design options and switch it to “custom code”. My guess is that’s where it is.

It may be one of those “dynamic sidebar” things, Like the way some themes have default widgets until you put something else in the sidebar, but I’m guessing you already added your own widgets and the suprebomb remains…?
In an case, put this in your style.css and it will go away.

#multimedia_box {
    display: none;
}

Holy crap Joey! That’s it!

How the hell did you know that?

Well if you look at the source code for the blog page where the widget appears, it does put it in a multimedia box div (which you actually pointed out)…but also notice how it’s a “custom box” class.

My guess is that’s how he was able to make it only appear on the blog pages: the code was entered in the custom box field of the multimedia box, and then the mmbox was turned off…

I bet if you look in the custom functions.php there’s some code in there instructing the site to display the mmbox if the entry is of a “post” type.

Pretty slick, actually.

good call joeysimon! a conditional multimedia box.