26 Blogger Widget Problem (sectionID error) and a temporary workaround
August 19, 2008 /

As many of you have expressed in your comments and emails, there seems to be an issue with installing widgets using the Blogger Widget API (widget installers).

From what I have read in various forums all widget installers are affected by this, including even the Feedburner widget to add an email form or blog list to a Blogger blog.

As yet, I'm unable to devise a solution for this problem, but I can offer a workaround for those who need to add a new widget to their layout. Here are the details of the problem and a temporary solution until the issue is resolved.



The issue with adding widgets to Blogger layouts

Many of us have been experiencing problems when trying to add a widget using a third party "widget installer" such as the recent comments widget, Feedburner's email subscriptions code and even Amazon widgets.

We are able to follow any steps nescessary to add the widget to our blogs until we are redirected to Blogger's "Add a new widget" page, where we can customize the title, content and choose the blog where the widget will be installed.

At present, clicking the "Add widget to your blog" link results in a screen like this:



The top half of the screen explains that there is a missing required field in the form used to add the widget to our blog:

We're sorry, but we were unable to complete your request.

The following errors were found:

sectionId: Required field must not be blank
While the lower half includes a bX error code.

It seems that the API for adding new widgets may either be in the process of an update or has a temporary error as everything up to this point seems to be working fine.

There are already several threads in the Blogger help group regarding this issue and many of us are trying to work out a solution to the problem.

I will of course update this post when the problem is resolved or when we have discovered a working solution, but in the meantime we can use a temporary workaround.

A temporary work-around for the problem adding third party widgets

As far as I can tell, the API for adding new widgets works just fine up until the point of adding to a specific blog.

This means that when we arrive at the "Add Page Element" page, the code included in the "Edit Content" section should already be configured and suitable for our needs.



If you click the "Edit Content" link on the "Add Page Element" page, this will reveal the code which should be added as the widget content.



You can then copy this code to your clipboard, and paste inside a regular HTML/JavaScript gadget through the Layout>Page Elements page in your regular Blogger dashboard.

While this will take longer (and is certainly more troublesome) than the regular method to add a new widget, it is certainly preferable to being unable to add a new gadget at all!

Your thoughts on the problem?

If you have any suggestions or know of a solution we could use for the widget installation problem, please let us know about this by leaving a comment or sending me an email.

Once this issue is resolved or documented further, I will be sure to update this post with the new information so we can begin using (and developing) widgets for our Blogger blogs!

26 Comments:

20 August 2008 01:47 রাশেদ said...

Lucky me. I faced no problems. The code probs I faced were nicely handled by u and Fernando. :)

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20 August 2008 03:23 colective design said...

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20 August 2008 03:24 colective design said...

i'm sory click fail

20 August 2008 12:00 Best Jokes said...

I was also facing this problem....I never thought it is a bug with the Blogger Draft version...

I was actually using this workaround solution, copying the code and paste it in a HTML/JavaScript block. :D

20 August 2008 15:45 Pete said...

Can you post a link to a page that's using this API so I can test?

Is this happening w/ Blogger's stock templates or just custom ones?

20 August 2008 16:13 Amanda said...

Hello Pete,

Thank you for looking into this for us!

I've tried with both Blogger's default and highly customized templates, both of which cannot install a widget using the API.

You could test this with any of the widget installers on this page, or try this one instead which I've been using to test the widget installations.

Also, you may want to test Feedburner's widget installation pages for BuzzBoost, Email Subscription widgets, etc as these seem not to be working either.

I haven't tried using Widgetbox or any of the other services with which people are reporting errors.

As far as I can tell, anyone trying to use a widget installer has been getting these errors since Monday (possibly Sunday evening).

Hope this may help resolve the problem! Many thanks for looking into this problem for us :)

20 August 2008 16:39 Kurt Avish said...

I was getting this problem too. Thanks for this work around.

20 August 2008 23:27 Allison said...

I also was having the same problem and even wrote the forums here about it. The temporary workaround works just fine, and it worked for the widgets here at Blogger Buster, widgetbox and with Blog Catalog.
Thanks Amanda!

21 August 2008 02:58 Cathy said...

It worked!! Thank you!

21 August 2008 17:04 Bloggmojo said...

Hi Amanda!

I contacted you a couple of days ago regarding the possiblity of making an interview with you. I understand that you regurlary get a lot of emails and you have a hard time answering them all. But if you're interested. Contact me on hello@bloggmojo.com or find my original email in your inbox.

Have a nice day!

28 August 2008 10:24 DrWiz said...

Blogger Buzz says this is been fixed :)
And they link to this post too...

28 August 2008 10:49 Amanda said...

@DrWiz: Thanks for pointing this out! Wow, Blogger really are pulling out all the stops for recent updates. Have you read about the new "Following" feature? I can't find it on my dashboard yet, but I can't wait to try it out :P

I'll update and post this new information ASAP.

@Pete (if you're reading this): Thank you for fixing the problem and for these great new features :D

28 August 2008 15:24 DrWiz said...

@Amanda
Yeah, Its gonna be a great feature, Even am waiting for it to be active on my dashboard... :)

30 August 2008 06:58 Jake Ilac said...

Even me I am also experiencing that up to now. Blogger said that they had fixed it already but why do I get the same result when I'm adding widget on my sidebar. All I thought there's a problem with regards to my codes but others also does have this kind of error.

It really annoying me.

9 September 2008 01:32 Setiyoso said...

Usefull, Thanks Amanda!!
I love you..

9 September 2008 12:22 the Amateur Book Blogger said...

Hi Amanda
I have an issue where I can no longer edit my blogroll widget - the ADD, revise or remove icons for each blog are missing - anyone any ideas? Thxs

http://amateurbookblogger.blogspot.com

13 September 2008 22:24 bloggy said...

I am new to blogging and didn't know why I kept getting the error. I use FF but when I got this error I opened up the new Chrome browser and updated my template. It has worked a few times.

23 September 2008 22:33 Krates said...

Hi Amanda,

Thank you very much for this post. We had a link on our instructions (postreach.com) to this post for the last few weeks. It has help us and our users a lot.

This problem seems to have gone away. Thanks a lot for the help.

8 February 2009 08:19 aman said...

hi Amanda,
thank you for this new concept.
smith
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21 April 2009 08:31 Asif said...

Thanks for giving the solutions.

25 February 2010 16:02 buy viagra said...

I like this comment: "Even me I am also experiencing that up to now. Blogger said that they had fixed it already but why do I get the same result when I'm adding widget on my sidebar" is very interesting...

20 May 2010 11:39 Alex said...

Very nice solution

...Alex

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27 May 2010 08:15 Kamagra said...

Blogger layouts are very best.They provide with different widgets.These widgets add functionality to the blog.Really great technical article.

31 May 2010 10:16 kamagra said...

I like this article concept.I have used this widget.This is helpful.I did not find any problem.

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