mikethutchinson

Apologies for the delay, but OK – sorted. Many thanks for your help.

So could I change the theme and would that solve the problem?

Ironically this theme is promoted on the basis that it is “designed to make your content the focus”…

That’s what’s so odd. I’ve been dragging and dropping widgets exactly as you say and nothing happens. I’ve seen all the forum chat claiming the problem’s connected to plug-ins, but I only have two – Fast and Secure Contact Form and WordPress Database Backup. They seem so popular the problem can’t be connected with them. I drag and drop search, pages and links into the Sidebar 1 slot, visit my site, and nothing’s changed. Feeds, archives, categories, meta – all the things I don’t want are still there. When I return to the widget admin page, there’s nothing in the Sidebar 1 slot.

Is there an equivalent of the “publish” confirmation button that I should be pressing? What do you make of this?

As I mentioned above I’ve got an automatic database backup. If it comes to it, can I use Notepad to edit? Is that like PSPad or Text Wrangler?

Thanks for this. As you can tell, if code is poetry it’s not stuff I understand. (The “code less travelled”? Hm.) But I’ll have a go.

Thing is, it isn’t the whole of the sidebar I want to remove. I want to keep the search function, the list of pages and the links. Is there a way to remove the other stuff (as above) without tampering with code?

Erm, the other thing is, how do I “look in header.php”? I did it once, but that was before Christmas and I’ve forgotten since… I did mention I was not techie…

Whatever I do in the end, if I bungle it, is there an equivalent of the “undo typing” in Word that restores what you just deleted?