Magento Widget not showing up on frontend

Question

I am trying to add widget instance from Magento Admin Panel for Categories pages left sidebar, Product pages right sidebar, Home Page main content. None of the widgets are appearing on frontend. Is it possible that Block Reference to not work for adding widgets in a theme? I selected the theme package and widget type is CMS Static Block.

I contacted the theme designer on his support forum. He said I can add widgets to the sidebar using Magento Backend interface. But the widgets are not showing up on frontend. No matter I add a Static Block, a Category link or anything else, it doesn't show up on frontend.

Answer 1

The issue has been resolved. It was a small misconfiguration. System> Configuration> Design> Themes> Default was set to theme name. Theme designer asked me to remove it and now can add widgets.

Answer 2

So, to help someone else that is new-ish to Magento, the issue I had was that the categories were all "Root" categories. Magento will not show those, they have to be sub-categories of the "Default Category". So frustrating, but that was it.